My Own Person
by alizomes
Summary: Jim Kirk is tired of being compared to her father, tired of being judged because she was born a girl (it's the 23rd century, she can't believe misogynists still exist), tired because of how her ridiculously complicated past is slowly catching up to her. fem!kirk
1. Prologue

Prologue

 _"Because death is the only thing that could have ever kept him from you."_

 _Ally Carter, Out of Sight, Out of Time_

The birth of James T. Kirk was not easy.

For one thing, George had wanted a boy. A heir and a spare as they say. He came from a family of backward beliefs- some that unfortunately stuck with him- and wanted children who were capable of running the farm in Riverside.

He loved his wife, Winona, and would love their second child no matter what sex, but they both knew that a boy would have a simpler life. Or maybe he was just a bit of a chauvinist- most would never know.

Winona had decided not to scan for the gender of the growing baby in her belly, and wouldn't choose baby names until he or she was born.

Then a crazy Romulan decided to open fire on the _Kelvin_ , causing the little kicker to immediately want to escape. Winona was in labour about two months early, and god did she want it to stop.

At least she knew the kid was a stubborn one like its father, which was strangely reassuring. She begs the medical staff not to leave without her husband, but they follow captain's orders and fly away from the _Kelvin_.

Winona Kirk screams, agony tearing through her body. It felt like she was being torn apart. But in her mind there was only one thing she was worrying about- _George_.

She couldn't get him to leave the ship, not for their child, and Winona knew that this might be it. Her husband would be a hero, that she was sure of, but what would become of their family?

Keeping that thought in her mind, she pushed harder and something slithers out of her.

The noise of torpedoes nearly drown out the child's cries. George's voice, filled with hope and love, even from the other end of the static transmission, asks breathlessly. "What is it?"

Winona feels the tears prickling at her eyes. _It's a girl._ Those words laid on the tip of her tongue, waiting to be spoken. She couldn't say it, better to die believing a lie, than with the truth. He wanted a boy so that was what he'll get. "It's a boy!"

"A boy!" His voice was just so happy it caused tears to roll down Winona's cheeks. She felt so angry, for the Romulans for taking her husband away from her at this time, for herself lying to comfort herself. It was selfish, and yet she reasoned how it was worth it. "Tell me about him."

 _What was there to tell?_ The words just rolled out of her mouth. "He's beautiful."

A moment later, she adds. "George, you should be here. I love you."

Her heart freezes as she hears the fatal words: _Impact alert_. Winona was just so tired that she closes her eyes for a moment. The accusing gazes of the silent doctors burn into her, they knew she was telling a lie, but wouldn't interrupt George Kirk's precious time.

"What are we going to call him?"

"We can name him after your father." _Father_. She was a mother now, to a child that would soon be without a father. Winona lets a sob loose as she cradles her fragile daughter.

"Tiberius? Are you kidding me?" She could hear the teasing scoff in his voice. "No, that's the worse. Let's name him after your dad. Let's call him James."

"James." She tries but the name doesn't fit right. Yet there was no time to waste, her baby girl was a James and it sticks.

"It's perfect." There are some ominous sounds on the other side. "Sweetheart, can you hear me?"

These must be their very last words. "I can hear."

 _Desperately_. "I love you so much. I love you-"

The _Kelvin_ (the ship where they met, grew up, built their bridges, wasted their tears- not exactly in that order) explodes as it rams into the monstrous black ship. Winona lets go of her emotions for once, and _sobs_ , heart breaking. She couldn't believe it, George was gone. There would be no body, nothing would be left for her to mourn besides his laughter and memories. He was just gone.

She looks down at their daughter, holds the tiny body close to her chest, and smiles softly through her tears. _Oh, she's gorgeous._ _George would've loved her._

This was James Tiberius Kirk's first minute in the universe.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

 **Star Trek is not mine. I wish it was, but it isn't.**

 **This my first fic on FFN so bear with me. The idea of a female Jim Kirk has been in my head for several days, and I can't find a lot of fem!kirk fics so I've decided to write one of my own.**

 **I really, really hope you'll enjoy reading it. Please leave a review!**

 **Updated with more details and slightly better writing: 7/27/2018**

 **(Found the quote on Goodreads- literally the first thing you see on the 'father-and-daughter quotes' page.)**


	2. Age of Innocence

**Chapter 1**

 **Age Of Innocence**

Jim started from the bottom, her mom leaving as soon as her daughter's eyes went from gray to blue. George Kirk blue. A constant reminder of her lies proved too much for Winona, who left her children in the care of her brother Frank.

The woman went back to the stars, where she stayed in deep space for missions that seemed to go on forever. At least, that was what a young girl named James thought.

It was soon apparent to George Jr. that he and his little sister were not going to be treated well by their uncle, who comes home drunk and noisy from work late at night. He had to adapt, he feeds her, changes her, bathes her, and affectionately decides on Jim from the choices of Jamie, Jimmy, and JT. Jim takes her first steps at four months and is speaking at eight. George grudgingly allows her to call him Sam, mainly because George was too hard to pronounce.

She has her first allergic reaction at nine months, when George feeds her freshly harvested strawberries. Jim gets pneumonia when she is one and stays in the hospital for two weeks. She lives through all of it and comes back stronger than ever. He has to consult her allergy list when he makes meals now.

But her brother can't be with her all day, he has to go to school. George always tries to come home extra early to be with his sister, to hide her from Frank, who has been in a foul mood since he got laid off. He is seven and she is three when their guardian is fired for making inappropriate comments at his job.

Even though he loved his sister, George is still a kid and acts like one when Frank (he stopped being Uncle Frankie somewhere along the way) becomes less cautious and starts raising his voice and yelling insults about their father around the house. He leaves home, only coming back for a change of clothes and to check on Jim, keeping as far away from the farmhouse as he was capable of.

Jim grows up quickly. She learns to be quiet and obedient. It's not enough to stop Frank from hitting her though, so she learns to hide the bruises.

Jim goes to the library, a small brown building in town, it becomes a sanctuary for the girl. The librarian, a plump woman with children and grandchildren of her own, gives her the first taste of motherly love when she hugs the pitifully small blonde every time she comes into the room. Jim discovers that she had a very good memory and head for science, so she puts it to good use.

Jim teaches herself how to play chess from a yellowed instruction manual and Mrs. Rodden's battered set, how to dance, the basics of engineering, physics and math, and hones her coding skills on a computer that had been at the library for more than a decade. She is six, going on seven, when she is automatically enrolled into the neighbouring school.

Never once does she wish to be someone else.

* * *

Not until she meets her mother, a tired-looking woman with a shiny badge on her chest. Winona arrives unannounced and is shocked to see her daughter writing what looks like an astrophysics equation on paper with a crayon, surrounded by mounds of rubbish on the floor and dirty dishes in the sink, with her brother and her son nowhere to be seen.

"What is this?" Winona crouches to be eye-level with Jim.

"Nothing." Her little girl flips the paper over. "Who are you?"

Winona's heart breaks and she hates herself for leaving. She couldn't bring herself to tell James that she was her mother, the person who left her to her own devices in the dry, Iowa desert.

"Nobody." The lie comes to her easily.

"Nobody is nobody." Jim remarks, then her eyes narrow. "How did you get in?"

"I have a key." Winona explains, holding the key up, making the keyring glitter in the afternoon sun. She could see Jim torn between trust and fear, before she chooses to trust her.

"I'm Jim," She introduces herself, her brilliant blue eyes lighting up as she smiles. Winona's breath catches when she sees the colour of the irises. "Jim Kirk."

"That's a nice name."

"It's a boy's name." Jim's bottom lip sticks out in a pout.

"Your father gave it to you." Winona says. She hasn't been a mother for a long time and she feels like a stranger to her own child.

"About the only thing he gave me." Jim is losing interest and starts to sketch a face onto her paper.

There is a certain bitter quality to her voice that made Winona wonder where did her little girl go, though she was only a baby when she went on the mission. She looks around, sees the empty cans, and puts two to two together.

"Does your uncle treat you well? Does he spend time with you?"

Instantly a guarded look comes over Jim's features. "Are you one of 'em social workers, lady?"

"No, I'm from Starfleet."

"Oh." Comes the simple answer.

Jim doesn't seem to want to talk any further, because her crayon marks the paper more forcefully and Winona soon realises that she was drawing her.

It's a crude sketch, but there was a clear shape to the face. She had hands like George's, strong and steady, with long, nimble fingers like hers.

She watches her drawing for a while, before going, "Shouldn't you be at school?"

Jim looks at her from top to bottom with her blue eyes, Winona is struck once again by the revelation of how much she looks like George. There was a bit of her in the nose and petite frame, but the rest was all her late husband.

Jim nods. "I punched Freddie yesterday for calling my friend a fat crybaby, which was mean. Now, I'm suspended for five days."

"You're lucky you weren't expelled," As soon as those words were out of her mouth, Winona cringes. She was sounding more and more like a social worker. "Violence is never the answer."

"Only when boys are being idiots."

Winona nods sagely. In her mind, she was visioning punching the living daylights out of Frank.

Jim continues. "It's alright that I'm suspended- I don't learn much at school anyway. All my teachers think I'm clever, my science teacher says I'm too smart for my own good."

"Really?" She asks, feeling proud.

"Yeah."

Jim adds the final touch to her drawing and titles it _Nobody_ in a childish scrawl. Winona takes it and slips it into her pocket, smiling softly. Her daughter does not stop her.

"You have to leave now, Miss," Jim takes her by the hand, Winona is horrified to see how much her hand dwarves her daughter's skinny one, and leads her to the door.

"You're seven, aren't you?" Winona turns and crouches down to face Jim, who frowns and slams the wooden door shut with a bang.

* * *

Later, Winona looks up James T. Kirk on her PADD for the first time in years. She feels motherly pride when she goes through the list of her achievements and growing dread when she sees how Jim was hospitalized at least once a month.

 _Falling down the stairs. Burns. Falling from a tree. Minor lacerations. Cracked ribs. Broken nose._ The list goes on and on.

Jim had more injuries in seven years than most people would in a lifetime. Small wonder why she never got any messages from Frank, he was too drunk to bother to text back.

Her little girl had become a punching bag for her brother, she snorts in disgust. And she had believed Jim was safe.

But she has a job to do, back on her ship, the _Constellation_ , on a mission with unspecified length. So she leaves without bringing Jim with her. Winona accepts how cowardly this was, but she doesn't want her bubble to burst. She needed to get away from that place. From Jim's clouded George-blue eyes.

She comes back three years later, after burying herself into her work. Winona comms him that she was coming home in two days, and applies for extended shore leave.

It's an entirely different place from the one Winona remembers, there were no beer cans in sight. She doesn't know if she could live this lie any longer when she is back on Earth and face to face with Jim's abuser.

Her daughter is scowling, Jim knows this woman. She had seen her mother before, in pictures in the attic, but she's the same Starfleet officer who visited three years ago.

"Hi, Winnie. It's great to see you," Frank greets cheerfully. His breath smells overpoweringly of mint. "Come back to see the kids?"

"Where's George?"

Her brother's smile shrinks for a bit, until it comes back slightly more shakily. "Out playing with his friends."

"He ran away," Jim tells her later, with steel in her voice. " _Mother_."

 _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry._ Winona wants to beg for forgiveness at the sound of the venomous word and the look in Jim's grey-tinted eyes. Instead she clenches her fist and beats her brother up.

She should've done this years ago, but it was too late for regrets now.

The bruises and scars on Jim's body tell their own story. Winona, who now knew that she would probably never get over George's death, not with what had happened with her kids, sends the blonde to her aunt on Tarsus IV.

She heard that the governor was especially lenient to children.

* * *

 **AN:**

 **Star Trek is not mine.**

 **Thank you so much for responding! I appreciate all reviews. Will Jim end up with Bones? It's going to be a slow journey. This part (maybe three chapters? is that enough?) is going to be about Jim's childhood experiences.**

 **I think when she grows up, Jim would look like Amber Heard, but with blue eyes.**

 **Updated 7/29/2018: I feel like the parts about her childhood need to undergo a serious rewrite but I just don't have time for it. So maybe in a couple of years when I have free time, I'll do it. In the meantime, just imagine that Winona called the police the first time she returned and locked Frank up for abuse. Thanks.**


	3. Loss of Innocence

Chapter 2:

When Jim was nine, she left Frank with two six-packs of authentic beer and hitchhiked her way to San Francisco to check out the _Kelvin_ exhibition.

She learnt about the incident in her advanced history class and hacked into the Starfleet archive to read more about her father. The _Kelvin_ files are watertight and required more hacking than the nine year old Jim could manage.

Jim wore a pressed white dress to the exhibition and pays for her ticket with the money she saved up from the pensions. She feels strangely out of place in the glitz and glamour of the event, attended by officials and foreign dignitaries.

She's very curious about her father's history, as her mother was still in space, with no hopes of her ever coming down, and her teacher was tight-lipped about her father.

Jim is in search for something tangible, maybe a recording of his voice, a video, not just blurry pictures. She needs to know him, the man who shaped her life.

The blonde is oblivious to the shocked look of the security guard as he reads her ID. She enters the spacious hall, a gigantic replica of the _U.S.S. Kelvin_ hangs above her.

She slips through the circulating crowd and comes upon a bronze statue of her father. He's as handsome as his pictures, with a determined look carved onto his metal face. Jim sears it into her memory as she moves away to read the holographs.

Starfleet seemed to worship her father in a way, there was nothing sacred. Pictures from all points of his short life, of him grinning in his blue science uniform, videos of him aboard the _Kelvin_. Even his uniform was on display.

"He was a brave man." A voice speaks from her left, it's a man in a sharp dress uniform. He looks quite familiar as he speaks to the petite blonde girl who was hovering in front of the photo gallery.

"I suppose he was." There is testiness to her tone and she crosses her arms, Jim is rather cold in the hall.

"You suppose?" The man raises an eyebrow. "George Kirk is a hero who saved 800 lives."

"800 lives?" The girl looks at him. "Even his wife?"

"Of course, him and his so-daughter." He corrects himself in time. He still thought of George's offspring as a boy, having never really met her.

She tilts her head up and looks the man dead in the eye. "Why?"

Christopher Pike is slightly shaken by the intensity of the young girl's steely blue stare. He couldn't miss those irises. "Are you his-"

Jim is gone before he even finishes the question. The young girl seemed to have a talent for vanishing, he wonders if she knew that security was looking for her.

She turns up at the memorial plaque, where the names of the 31 officers lost on the Kelvin. Jim traces her father's name, _George Samuel Kirk_ , inscribed in gold. It's her brother's name.

Security finds her there, standing with her finger on the curve of the last letter, and brings her to the person in charge of the exhibition. The curator has a sizable girth and a predatory gleam in his squinting eyes as she nears. She struggles, Frank cannot know she was here, she would be punished.

Jim is attacked by the reporters, flashes lighting up her wide eyes. She looked like a deer in the headlights as she is photographed repeatedly, until she felt sick.

Chris, noting the sudden stir in the calm atmosphere and the sound of camera shutters clicking, assumes they had found George's kid. He and Number One head in the direction where Jim is visibly shaking.

He shields her with his body and leads her away from the wild paparazzi, who never thought they would get so big a scoop. _The_ Kelvin baby! The press was having a field day, snapping up photos hungrily.

"You okay, kid?" He asks the shivering girl. She looks at him with large blue eyes and nods slightly.

"Did she come here alone?" Number One inquires, looking out of the restroom to check if the reporters were still there.

"Yes, I did." Jim's voice is soft and like spun glass. "Can I leave please? I have to go home."

"Do you need a lift?"

"I don't even know your name, but I assume you know mine." He gets the sensation that she was analyzing him with those eyes. Pike could see her staring down an entire panel of admirals years later, calm and unafraid.

"Lieutenant Christopher Pike." He resists the urge to shake her hand. "And the nice lady over there is Number One."

"That's a funny name." Jim giggles, she couldn't imagine being called a number.

"Yes, it is." His first officer looks at him pointedly.

"I was a friend of your father's." He begins awkwardly, because there was no manual on how to talk to your dead best friend's kid. "We were roommates at the Academy."

"What about my mother?" Jim asks, she had been looking forward to this part.

"Your old man used to have a motorcycle and he'd put her on the back of it." Chris recalls Winona's indignation at being put on the back. "It drove her mad, but she loved George. I think your mom wouldn't have settled down if it weren't for him, Winona was tough, hard as nails."

Jim laps it all up, visibly calming. Even Number One leans against the wall to listen to the captain reminiscing about their academy days.

She starts to open up, telling Chris all about her school and how she got her first degree in Engineering until she said she had to catch the final shuttle back to Riverside. Jim omits the parts about Sammy and Frank, they weren't real tonight.

* * *

Jim yawns as they leave the restroom, it had been a long night, and her imagination was finally sated. But it were not to last, because George's final words were being broadcast the moment they left the room.

She snaps to attention at the sound of her father's voice, clear and slightly out of breath.

 _What is it?_

 _It's a boy._

Jim feels cold, even though the temperature was perfectly regulated in the hall. Captain Pike stops walking and lays a hand on her shoulder for comfort.

 _A boy? Tell me about him._

 _He's beautiful._

Jim balls up her hands into tight fists, her nails digging into her palms.

 _George, you should be here. I love you._

The tiny blonde is shaking with repressed fury and sadness. Pike feels sorry for the kid, though he supposed pity was the last thing she wanted.

 _What are we going to call him?_

 _We can name him after your father._

That was how she got her boy's name. It could've been different if her mother had just told him that she was a girl. It was the truth, Winona, the strong, untouchable woman, _hard as nails_ , Pike had called her, was a liar.

 _Tiberius? Are you kidding me? No, that's the worse. Let's name him after your dad. Let's call him James._

 _James_.

She has heard enough. Jim shrugs off Pike's hand and runs away. He lets her go, a somber look on his face.

 _It' ?_ The words ring in her ears, dancing around her, teasing her with the idea of another life.

A life where her father had lived, Sam had stayed, and Frank was not within a hundred mile radius of their house. Where Winona wouldn't lie about her daughter being a daughter instead of a son.

She wants to scream, Jim's only nine and it's too much.

Jim is running before she even registers it. She needs to get away from all of this, go back to Iowa.

And it's not the last time she would run like this.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

 **Blah, blah, blah. Star Trek really doesn't belong to me. Thanks for reading.**

 **So this chapter was not about Tarsus, at least we have Pike now, but the next chapter is definitely about Kodos. I'll continue it and make things up as I go on. Still not sure about who to pair Jim with, though I don't think it is necessary to pair her with anyone. She's a strong woman who don't need no man (or woman).**

 **Leave a review (thanks for reviewing too)! :)**


	4. End of Innocence

**Chapter 3: The End of Innocence**

It's not the last time Jim sees Christopher Pike.

She wills herself to forget. Tarsus IV was a place for new memories, a fresh start. Jim takes to chess again, and makes friends. Her aunt watches her niece blossom from a guarded teenager, to a smiling young girl who was top of her class.

Jim likes the courses here, you could choose what you wanted to take according to your own interests and levels. The instructors were well-versed in their own subjects, and every class was challenging in some way.

"Such a clever girl." Her aunt Sharon praises as she reads Jim's quarterly performance record. "Just like your father."

Jim preens and tries not to think about the _just like your father_ comment.

She is thirteen, old enough to start doubting herself.

"We've been thinking of starting a chess club," Aaron, who was in the same astrophysics class as she was, a friend, says. "You want in?"

Jim says yes without hesitation.

She looks forward to school everyday, the ups and downs of school life here are new to her. There were no hurtful comments, no shoving and no underestimation. Jim's in academic paradise.

* * *

One day, she sees a short woman cursing at the governor's guards in what sounded like Romulan. Jim should know, she knows the lingua franca of Romulan. She could swear in Russian and Cardassian, two languages that had more in common than their consonants.

" _Excuse me, are you alright_?" Jim says in crisp Rihan.

" _These idiots patrolled their way through my flowers._ " The Asian woman replies curtly in an entirely different dialect.

" _Really_?" Jim has no knowledge of the other two dialects, but she could surmise that she was angry about flowers.

"Our sincerest apologies, Madam." The patrol leader, who wore a blue armband, apologises. "Please expect full compensation."

" _My flowers are ruined!_ " The woman flings her arms into the air as they leave. She is talking to just Jim.

She was also speaking in Andorian now, which was difficult because 60 different words could have the same translation in Federation Standard.

" _That's sad._ " It was really difficult for her to wrap her tongue around those words. There was only so much you could get from listening to audio tapes.

"Yes, indeed." The woman is speaking in English and has a strange look on her face. Jim had seen that face before, in a book perhaps.

"You're Hoshi Sato!" Jim declares, she had read about Sato's extraordinary linguistic accomplishments at the library. While she typically ignored other adults, she respected any person who could write an entire series of books on the Klingon language.

"And you are James T. Kirk." Hoshi says with an amused smile, glancing at the name tag on Jim's bag.

"Jim, please." She says politely, glad that she didn't mention her father.

"You have a way with words, Jim. Your Rihan is excellent for someone your age." Hoshi praises after she appraises the girl. "But your Andorii could use some work."

Jim blushes. "Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about, dear girl." Hoshi grins. "Xenolinguistics is the study of alien languages, morphology, phonology, and syntax. Means you've got a talented tongue."

Though Jim had no idea what the wink at the end of that sentence meant, she asked the linguist to teach her. Hoshi, who had decided to take her under her wing the moment the blonde had said _excuse me_ , pretends to debate with herself dramatically- it was funny watching her student squirm.

"Yes." A relieved smile comes onto Jim's face. "We start tomorrow."

* * *

They start with Vulcan, which was a hard language to learn no matter what. It gives Jim a challenge, to deal with those vowels and words. What she read on paper never sounded the same on her tongue.

It helps that there is a Vulcan family on the planet, though it takes a bit of sweet-talking to get them to talk to her in Vulcan. You could win over a Vulcan eventually, it just took time and a lot of effort to get their gazes to soften from steel to rock.

She masters it after nine grueling months, and then they go on to Klingon. The guttural language is an endless source of amusement for Jim, who does it in seven months this time. She loves reading Shakespeare out loud in Klingon, much to the mortification of her aunt.

Jim sails through Cardassian and the two types of Orion in nine months. She has never been happier, even if she wouldn't be a linguist, she was certain that learning these languages would be more useful than swearing in them.

Jim turns a blind eye to the steadily decreasing rations and her aunt's tense expression after every meal. She does not notice Sharon resting her head on Ben's shoulder after reading something on her PADD, her uncle looks hopeless, which is rare for him.

She's busy learning entirely new things, and for the first time in her life, she feels wanted.

They are halfway through Andorii, the day after her aunt cried silently in her pantry and her cousins locking themselves in their rooms, Hoshi grabs her by the arms and looks deeply into Jim's blue eyes.

" _Jim. Listen to me carefully._ " Hoshi continues to speak in Klingon, the safest language on the planet, known to just two. " _Governor Kodos is dangerous, he is going to massacre the people, you must hide, girl. Do you understand?_ "

Jim blinks twice, absorbing this information. " _Why_?"

" _The crops have been destroyed, Jim. That's what they have been hiding from us. Take what you can and run from this place, as far as you can go. Here_." Hoshi drops something silver into Jim's palm. " _A communicator tuned into Starfleet frequencies. Use it to contact the fleet_."

" _But I don't know how to use one!_ "

" _You are smart, Jim, too smart for your own good._ " Hoshi strokes the golden hair of her student tenderly. " _You will know what to do._ "

" _What about you, Hoshi?_ " Jim asks, turning the communicator over in her hand.

A resigned look comes over the woman's features. " _I will do what I can_."

Jim, overcome by a sudden sadness, hugs her teacher, who kisses her on the forehead.

" _Now go!_ " Hoshi shoos her away.

Jim looks back at the non-descriptive house, with the flowers she had help plant in the summer and the woman standing on the porch, her hand half-raised in the air.

And then she runs, the communicator clutched in her sweaty hand. There is something hammered onto her house's door. It's a list.

 _Harper, Benjamin Timothy._

 _Harper, Lillian Candice._

 _Harper, Sharon Lisa._

 _Harper, William Connor._

 _Kirk, James Tiberius._

Her aunt and her cousins are gone, there is no one left in the house. She mustn't think about how this feels like running away from home, instead of trying to survive.

Jim swiftly takes what she can, following Hoshi's advice. She wears two T-shirts and changes into pants, slips off her flats and chooses a pair of hiking boots that belonged to her cousin. Will had the same shoe size as she did.

Flinging on a jacket, she drinks all the water she can.

Filling the large pockets with protein bars, Jim exits the house.

She doesn't know where to go, she doesn't know who the enemy was. _Governor Kodos? That kind man who granted that much money to the Chess Club couldn't have caused this much fear._

Jim scales a tree, to see if she could catch a glimpse of the town square.

And when she does, she could see people marching into the center and falling down, never to rise again. Bodies were flung onto piles and burned, the smell reached where she was. Jim gags, she has seen enough.

* * *

Her first instinct was to head to the woods, then Jim remembered that higher ground was safer. And the mountains were north.

That's what she does, she walks past the edge of town and doesn't look back.

She meets other children on the second day. There's Natalia, Thomas, Kevin, Julian, Thea, Smith, and Waters.

Jim listens to how they avoided being killed and watch as they scarf down half a protein bar each, leaving her with seven.

"I hid in a tree for two days," Natalia explains. "The soldiers never found me."

"I took my brother and hid under the floorboards," Thea says, holding little Kevin tightly. "The soldiers walked over us."

Jim counts other ways to hide, diving into the woods, on the rooftops, camouflaging themselves.

"Anyone know why Kodos is doing this?" She asks.

Thea coughs and spits into the ground. Her eyes are wild, her face twisted. "The stored food wasn't enough to feed the people when the famine started. That's when he- that's when he rounded up the elderly and killed them first. I lost my grandparents."

"If we're going to survive this." Jim's voice is hoarse from lack of water but it still carries. "We have to go to the mountains. The further we go, the harder it is for them to catch us."

"Aye, aye Captain," Thomas says in a way Jim supposed was sarcastic. She glares at him before breaking out into a bright smile.

"I'll be captain." Jim declares.

"Yeah right." Julian rolls his eyes. "A girl gets to order us around."

"Yes, she does." Jim- no Captain JT, cocks her head up proudly, asserting her territory.

"You know this is genocide, isn't it? You're younger than some of us." Thomas points out. "I'm not sure you can handle this."

"And I bet I'm smarter than a lot of you."

"I'm sure that brain of yours is pretty good," Julian taps her forehead with his index finger mockingly. "But you don't know how to survive because deep down you're just a soft girl-"

The blonde punches him once and he falls to the ground, clutching his face.

"Anyone good with medicine?"

"I'm taking a pre-med course." Smith pipes up. He's the oldest at sixteen.

"You'll be my CMO." JT decides. "Take care of Julian here."

"It's just going to bruise," Smith reassures Julian as he looks at his wound.

"Tommy, you'll be my first officer." The teen nods seriously, he couldn't deny that this girl had a sort of charisma that everyone else lacked.

JT shows them her communicator. "Anyone who knows what Xenolinguistics is?"

Thea raises her hand timidly. "I can speak German and some Orion."

"Great, between me and you, you'll be communications." JT hands her the silver comm. What use would that have, she had no idea, as it was missing its pair but they had to make do with what they have.

"Julian and Waters, you're with me on away missions." At their questioning looks, she rolls her eyes. "Scavenger hunts. You'll be security."

"Natalia." The Russian girl shows some interest at the sound of her name. "You will be navigator and scout ahead for danger."

"Kevin." JT's voice softens as she glances at the four-year-old boy. "You'll be the mascot."

He stops sucking on his thumb and shoots her blinding smile. JT returns it with the shadow of her own and the group sets off to the mountains.

* * *

It isn't all fun and games. Water is a luxury they couldn't afford, they sleep on the barren dirt and as the week comes to an end, there are at least ten more additions to her ragtag crew. Survival is the only goal in her mind.

JT hopes for the best, but they have to cover more miles if they were to escape from Kodos' men. The blisters on her feet burst and hurt like hell, her throat is scalding, and her hair is matted and she knows how bad she smells.

Her boots have been worn away to tatters and plastic, and she walks with feet so calloused that she could step on a sharp stone and not feel it scrape against her skin.

It's on the eighth day when she sees Kodos' soldiers, with their armbands and phasers. There are two of them, joking about the massacre and talking about the women waiting for them when they got back.

JT sees red and attacks them, Finn and Harley, her new security officers now that Julian was delirious from lack of water, follow suit.

She fights dirty, aiming for maximum damage.

JT has never fought like this, so desperate for survival, not even with her stepfather.

She goes back to their camp that day, clutching two canteens and phasers. When she drinks, there's barely enough water left for a sip. Smith claims one of them for his patients, Julian, Waters and a tiny mute Orion. JT doesn't mind, her kids come first.

Thea collapses the next day from carrying Kevin, she's losing too much energy too quickly. JT wordlessly takes over and carries Kev across 16 miles of scorching dry grass every day until she recovers her strength.

The next patrol is a welcome respite, fighting comes easily to JT now. Jim is hidden in the darkest corners of her mind, because if she resurfaced, JT wasn't sure if she'll be able to take care of her kids.

"Are you sure…" Tommy trails off, looking into her eyes. He does not need to finish because JT had been wondering about it herself.

"They have noticed," Jim says, licking her dry and cracked lips, tasting blood. "We have to be quick."

 _Quicker than them_ , she does not say, but he knows.

* * *

More water and supplies are rationed out. Smith is ecstatic to see a medkit among the things the away team found. He has five more children waiting, some were other species that the captain carefully drew diagrams of their biology for him in the sand.

The Orion, who does not offer her name, is good at keeping the younger ones quiet at night.

But the strange coughs that have plagued the children since the time they left the fields are incurable for the pre-med student. Julian is the first to go, JT has no time to mourn the boy who had dared to question her orders since she announced she was captain.

They do their best to hide his body, as turned earth would be too obvious to the enemy. Most of them have never dug a grave before, so JT and her second moves stones and grass, Natalia mutters prayers in Russian for Julian as they trudge on.

The mountains are appearing on the horizon, Natalia estimates three days before arrival.

They make the most of the situation, making jokes and telling stories. JT knows that all things pass, they will endure.

The sickness gets worse as they pick up their speed since Nat and her second, Peters, warn of a regiment tailing them. Thea picks up ominous messages on the comm that JT reconfigured to recognize the signals of Kodos' transmissions.

JT tells Smith to leave some of his more serious patients behind, they were falling behind schedule. He doesn't want to, nobody wanted to leave their comrades behind, but they couldn't be saved even if he tried. Waters, Luca, Paddy, Jen, and the mute Orion make their decisions as Jim thrusts the phaser into Water's weak hand.

She watches with an unreadable expression as Waters shoots each of them in the head and then catches her eye. He salutes her, Jim nods once, returning the gesture.

He levels the phaser against his forehead.

The rest will live. JT will make sure of that.

They are running when the last shot rings out. Thea cannot stop Kevin's wails.

* * *

In hindsight, she should've known they were going to be found.

JT blames herself for letting her guard down. The mountains were like Nirvana and heaven mixed together, there was water and red fruit that she identified as lingonberries, perfectly harmless.

Nat was close to figuring out how to reach Starfleet, everyone was relaxing and smiling for the first time in- JT didn't know, time passed sluggishly when you were running for your life. Smith even did a jig because the fresh air was helping his remaining patients.

Then came the guards and everything went to hell.

JT yells at Tommy to take her kids and hide. She fends them off with Finn and Harley until both of them were dead and she was sedated.

She wakes up, chained and dressed in a clean white robe. All the light in this cell is focused on a modest-looking man, he's a bit on the chubby side and has a mustache. The feral light behind his eyes is unmistakable, she knows this is Kodos.

"My dear girl." He chuckles, the sound grating. "Did you really think you could run forever?"

JT is silent and stays that way while Kodos looks her over.

"You're a pretty one, aren't you?" He smirks. "Your 'crew' is very loyal."

"What did you do to them?" JT growls. "If you've hurt one hair on their heads, I swear I'll-"

He slaps her, hard. She's used to it from Frank but this man was in a league of his own.

 ** _Kodos has her kids._**

"Bring her in!" He calls and two masked men drag a battered Thea in. Her face is bruised but her lips quirk upward when she sees JT.

"Do what you want with her." JT starts at the subtle implication. Thea was only nine. She struggles against her chains, they couldn't do that to a child.

"You dirty son of a bitch!" He punches her in the stomach twice. "Let her go you mother-"

"Language." Kodos tuts.

The soldiers laugh and call for 'reinforcements' as he tore the clothes off Thea's body. JT couldn't look away, Kodos was holding her head forward, forcing her to watch. The brunette is putting up a fight, she needed two men to hold her down.

Thea is screaming profanities in German and is quickly silenced by something JT had would never want a girl of nine to see, much less have her mouth stuffed with it.

She thinks she passes out by the time the sixth suggests two-timing her. JT just wants to sleep.

Someone flings a bucket of ice-cold water onto her, shocking her back to life. JT sputters as a current of electricity courses through her body.

"You're awake. I didn't take you to be one to faint, James." Kodos is smiling, it makes him look almost fatherly, almost. No smiles could hide the thing he had just let his soldiers do to Thea.

"How is she? What did you do to them?" JT snarls. Her voice is cracked and she licks her lips to wet them. "You monster!"

Kodos grabs a lock of her hair, sniffs it, and yanks it until his fist comes away with a few strands of gold. "You will respect me, James."

That's when she notices the chessboard lying a few feet away from her, just out of reach.

"Ah yes, chess," Kodos says somewhat dismissively. "You were the champion of Tarsus IV's chess competition last year, an impressive achievement."

JT glowers.

"You caught my interest, it isn't every day you see a Vulcan defeated at chess." He chuckles dryly, the sound grating.

"What do you want?" JT spits.

"A good game." Another masked man walks in, JT glares at him. "He will be your helper."

She stares at both men distrustfully from under those full lashes. "I'll take white."

"I thought you would," Kodos says silkily.

"Knight to A5." She orders, her voice low. Kodos doesn't know anything about JT, not really.

To her dismay, the helper doesn't move the knight to A5, he moves the pawn to B4. JT could see how it would end, black would checkmate her in six moves.

"You're cheating!"

"So?" Kudos sneers as he takes her bishop.

JT doesn't speak again. He reminds her too much of schoolyard bullies with their cocky smirks and _I'm big, you're small_ excuses.

Jim never liked bullies.

The masked man delivers hits to her face, ten successive blows. She still doesn't move.

He forces her legs open, JT bites down on her lip but her cold stare does not waver.

Kodos looks at her with the air of a disappointed teacher and exits the room, carrying the game with him.

* * *

Someone enters, it's a young man, somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. He doesn't wear a mask, one side of his face has been burned off.

The man whips her. She shudders as pain, deep and piercing, shakes her to her core. It's nothing she couldn't handle until it passes the twentieth mark, that's when she starts to scream.

JT hopes the wounds on her back aren't infected. They sting when she moves and she curses whoever thought dangling prisoners in chains hanging from the ceiling was cool.

She couldn't even think properly in the haze that followed the whipping. And then someone has the bright idea to stuff salt into her injuries just as she regains consciousness. It hurts and JT has to bite her lips and recite the periodic table backwards until the pain subsides into a blissful, slightly irritating wave in the back of her head.

She doesn't begin to trust the food and water they give her, so they later have to force it down her throat. Someone wants her alive, that's for sure.

Kodos comes in sometime later, still wanting her to play chess with him.

"As if!" She yells at him, trying to get out of her chains to punch him in that stupid, smug face.

He frowns and hits her personally, splitting her lips and using a knife to cut her arm until he reaches bone.

The food stops coming, with water given a few days apart. A soldier comes in once and breaks two of her ribs before leaving swiftly.

Half the time, JT is hallucinating, her mind making up for the pain her body was suffering. The other half is spent worrying about her kids.

Alone, she counts the names of her crew in her head, she can hardly remember what colour was Nat's eyes, or how Smith's smile lit up his entire face.

But she repeats their names, again and again, clinging to the last bit of hope that they would survive.

 _Julian. Luca. Paddy. Jen. Little Orion girl. Waters. Smith. Finn. Harley._

JT thinks she'll die in that cell. She knows she's being a pessimist, there was a slight chance Nat contacted Starfleet, but she could see no other way this would end without her death.

It was a no-win scenario, and Jim hated those.

* * *

If Pike had a credit for every time he saw the colour blue and immediately thought of a Kirk, he would have enough money to pay off the Terran debt.

He couldn't help it. Kirk-blue was an abstract concept that always seemed to change. It was the sky, with its ever-changing tones; the sea, with all the swirls and colours that seemed to draw you in. But somehow those eyes were distinguishable in a colour palette.

Chris thought George had been wearing contacts or had his irises surgically altered when he first met him. No human could have eyes like those. Or maybe the Kirk family was just special in their genetic luck.

They didn't seem to have much luck elsewhere besides looks and brain power. And Tarsus IV once again proves it.

They haven't heard from the colony in months and finally, Starfleet has sent a ship to find out. The recently promoted Commander Pike leads a team down to the planet's surface.

Chris honestly didn't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't this. Charred buildings, withered wildlife, nobody in sight. The golden postcard-worthy fields of corn are gone, replaced by bone-dry stalks of grass.

And it gets worse when they reach what used to be the town square, piles of bodies just sat there, some burnt, some rotting. A few officers have to excuse themselves to vomit quietly at the side. Chris feels a bit queasy himself.

It gets worse as they go into the palace, there was nobody there besides a couple of guards playing cards. Matthias and Jon immediately shoot them, Chris doesn't even bother to stop them. Life signs were coming from the holding cells downstairs.

The men don't really put up much of a fight, at the sight of Starfleet officers they shoot themselves instantly. There had to have been instructions but the governor was MIA.

What really makes Chris fume was the small figures in those cells. The first one is a girl, she's been dead for a while, questionable fluids staining her legs. They stand there for a minute, mourning her.

Jon closes her eyes in respect.

The rest all hold children, they are still clinging to life as he frees them, the way their skin stretched over their bones looked too tight for comfort.

The final one they come across is at the very end of the hallway. The two men guarding the door were dead.

Chris breaks down the door. He nearly trips over a chessboard with a half-finished game.

The figure is dangling on chains, her wrists were bloody from straining against them, her fingernails were gone. Bones protrude from under her skin and a brownish robe hung loosely on her. The smell was ungodly. Wilson, a Catholic, murmurs prayers under her breath.

The girl tilts her head up and Chris feels his heart sink. _Was she here? How could she be here?_

Those eyes, a stormy blue-grey, are wide with recognition, sunken into her face. Last he checked, she was still in Riverside, getting her second degree. "Lieutenant Pike, you again?"

"Jim, you okay kid?"

"Fine, absolutely brilliant. Call me JT." She is laughing hysterically and for a moment he thinks she's gone crazy. "Funny how you ended up here as well."

"Sedate her." Chris orders, sick of the laughter. He could see every outline of her broken ribs, she was hurt and bloodied, hallucinating even. She must have endured so much pain, it was unimaginable to see this sort of abuse on a child.

Just then, Jim sags against her chains and sighs. "You are real, aren't ya? Or is this just another dream. I don't know anymore. I don't know black from white, right-" -A dry cough racks her body- "-from wrong. Take me home."

Her eyes flutter shut, showing the purple welts on her face. Wilson jumps to blast off those chains and shoots a sedative into her neck.

Then she starts to go into anaphylactic shock, Chris shouts into his comm to beam everyone back onto the ship as he carries the too light body of James T. Kirk up the stairs and where his team was waiting.

It turns out Jim (or JT as she was known to the other kids) was allergic to the sedative. Chris exhales deeply and rubs his temples, not bothering to hold back the tears.

 _Damn Kirk luck._

* * *

She heals quickly, but there are some wounds that last forever.

Jim doesn't stay for long after she wakes from her medically induced coma and certified fully functional by Dr. Hartford, the CMO of the _U.S.S. Brooklyn_.

Chris is brought up to testify about the Tarsus IV Massacre, ensuring that a financial settlement could be reached between the next of kin of all the dead. In some cases, entire families, generations of stories, had been wiped out. There is no one to pay too keep their mouths shut.

The media is calling it Starfleet's dirtiest secret.

Jim refuses any sort of therapy, she buries JT somewhere inside she's sure she'll never find again. And if she's prone to be easily startled by the smallest movement, and also rejecting the visits of her 'crew', it's her own business.

Winona Kirk is notified and shows up a few days later with a stuffed bear that makes Chris want to laugh and cry because Jim was going to take that poor woman apart.

Not if he doesn't first, but as soon as he steps closer to the blonde woman with a thunderous look that demanded Winona do some explaining, she shrinks and walks faster.

Chris wonders where did the other Winona go. The one who would've burst into the hospital as soon as she heard the news, kiss her daughter furiously before hunting down Kodos like a woman on a mission.

Needless to say, Winona Kirk does not visit again. Chris finds the teddy bear in Jim's arms though, a silent observer, as she sleeps fitfully.

Chris honestly doesn't expect her to want to stay with Starfleet, so when he finds her hospital bed empty one morning when he comes to visit, he isn't the least bit surprised.

He retires from flying a few years later, he's seen too much on Tarsus, of what a madman could do to four thousand people. Number One manages to snag him a desk job as Captain of Cadets, so technically he's a captain without a ship.

He sincerely hopes Jim is safe, he wonders if she was somewhere in the universe, stirring up trouble.

Chris is sure he'll never see her in this life again, until he makes a recruiting detour by Riverside, Iowa.

And the rest is history.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

 **Star Trek ain't mine.**

 **This is the longest chapter so far, but it's worth it. I didn't want to shorten any of the Tarsus scenes, what I think is important is the psychological torture Jim goes through. She's a very strong girl who can stay awake during all the pain, but there are some scars that stay with us forever. That's why I've given her PTSD, which will be dealt with sometime later. (I think.)**

 **PTSD gives the person nightmares and mysterious pains, that'll be explained in the academy part. Jim won't be perfect, she'll be reckless and self-destructive, I just really hope I could build her character nicely. Tell me what you think of this in the reviews.**

 **Thank you so much for reading this! :)**

 **P.S. I'm not sure if the chess moves are even accurate, because I don't know how to play chess, so feel free to correct them. And the USS Brooklyn definitely isn't canon.**

 **(Revised 20/1/2018)**


	5. Your Father's Daughter

**Chapter 4**

 **Your Father's Daughter**

 _Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet._

 _Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved._

 _-Helen Keller-_

* * *

Jim takes the earliest ship from Risa to Earth. She knows the captain of the _Bounty_ well enough for a discount. He's the one who taught her how to fix a warp core.

She never thought she'd go back to Earth, Jim had traveled her planet when she dropped out of school. She learns how to make a passable five-course dinner for some cultures, climbs mountains for the fun of it, masters the art of pit-fighting. She soon raises enough money to get on a shuttle to Risa. It's the furthest she can go with five hundred credits, so she takes the deal.

Jim thought she could run forever, going deeper and deeper into known space. She had no intention to ever return to Iowa ever again.

That is until she receives news of Frank's death. The message pops up on her PADD one day. Jim had thought it was originally a prank because there was no way people could track her down.

A hastily-worded message to the Registry confirmed it. Frank was dead, he had left everything to Jim and she was going to have to go back to Earth to collect his belongings.

Jim had wondered if space was deep enough to get rid of her uncle and all those bad memories. It isn't.

And she still goes home.

* * *

Jim makes more than a detour in Riverside, she spends four months in that dusty town.

Jim finds an antique violin in Frank's room, still in perfect condition despite years of being unused. She tries it, the strings are out of tune, but it sounds fine to her ears after she fixes it.

She holds up an old stuffed bear, suddenly overtaken by nostalgia. ( _"I'm sorry." "I hate you."_ ) It is thrown into a box as she cleans the house up.

Jim's the only one who attends Frank's funeral. She wants to say good riddance, or at least, _ding dong, the witch is dead_. Instead, she only feels pity for the small man in the coffin, who never tried to do anything with his life, and only knew how to take it out on those weaker than he.

She gets the money and the farmhouse. Jim keeps it in her account, for emergencies.

* * *

Her mother comms her, one day, when she is fiddling with the engine of her new, secondhand motorcycle. It's still in good condition for an old model, and it feels so very satisfying to see it sitting outside her house with a fresh coat of black paint.

It was an unknown number, and Jim had had enough bad experiences with those to want to ignore it.

But when she traced it, the signal came from the _Constellation_ , a Starfleet cruiser, her mother's.

It takes five seconds for her to find out all this and accept the call.

"Jim Kirk." Her mother's wane face appears on the vidscreen. Winona has aged in the past decade since she had escaped to the stars.

"What do you want, Winona?" She replies curtly, ignoring the flash of hurt in her mother's lined eyes. _Good_.

"I just wanted to hear your voice." The older woman answers, her mouth set in a thin line. "You've grown up to be such a beautiful woman."

Jim had seen pictures of her mother when she was younger, long blonde hair and hazel green eyes, looking just like a princess of an ancient time. Now, Winona is a princess no longer, not even a queen, just a tired woman aged before her time.

"You has plenty of chances to hear it, why choose now?" Jim says coldly.

Jim guesses at where her mother was, somewhere clean and white, her quarters on the _Constellation_ possibly.

"When you went back to Riverside to Frank's funeral, that was the first time I could track you down to a location," Winona admits. "You're very good at hiding from me, sweetie."

"He was a douche." She says with a scowl. "What did you even _see_ in him?"

Winona, to her credit, does not bow her head. She simply stares at Jim calmly. "I was hurting, and he could take away the pain."

"That's not an excuse."

"I've spent thirteen years thinking about this, of course, I know this isn't an excuse." She says. "But I honestly thought that he could fix me. After George died I was never really the same."

"You had Sam." Jim snaps. "You had me. Wasn't that enough?"

"It should've been." Winona sighs.

"You ran away from your problems, you ran away from your family," Jim sneers, smelling weakness and attacking. "You sent me straight to _him_!"

Her mother looks at her carefully, even though it was just a vid call and not a face-to-face interaction.

"Tarsus IV?" Winona says, her face filling with something Jim thought was remorse. It was difficult to tell. "It was for your own sake."

"And what happened to me there-" Jim has not been this angry for so long, she wants to lash out, to _hurt_ something. "-did you think that was for _my_ sake too?"

"I had no idea a massacre of that scale could happen, he had seemed so nice to children, and there were programs for gifted kids so I thought-"

"You thought he wouldn't dare to kill us?" Jim interrupts Winona. "I was _fourteen_ , do you have any idea what I had done there, to survive?"

It seemed like a dam was opening in her heart, and all her pent-up emotions were flooding out, drowning her.

"Oh, Jim," Winona says softly. "I'm sorry for what you had to go through, but you wouldn't let me in."

"So you're telling me that why I am this way now isn't partly your fault?" Jim feels close to tearing her hair out- not hers, Winona's. "If you had taken me with you-"

"The genocide still would've happened, Jim, and no one, not even any of the nine, would've survived."

Jim inhales deeply, wondering what Winona was thinking of her reaction right now. She had never thought of it that way, that if she had been selfish and ran away from the planet, she would never have met those broken children, and never have saved them.

 _What would history have been like without her? Without her father?_

"You weren't there for me," Jim says. "All you got me after I was _scarred for life_ was a stupid stuffed bear? Did you think I was still a little girl, still innocent enough to play with toys?"

"I wish you could've gone with me, sweetie, I really do," Winona says gently. "You were smart- 'too smart for your own good', I recall you telling me, but I was on the verge of being promoted and I thought maybe just a year with your aunt would be good for you before you joined me on the _Constellation_."

"So you cared only about yourself," Jim sneers. "Did you even try to find my brother?"

"I didn't know that George Samuel had run away until you were twelve, Jim, Frank never told me."

"His name is _Sam_ and you could've asked," Jim says, a bit too loudly for a call. "If you have cared about us, you would've called the police on Frank and you would've taken us with you to space. This call after a decade of silence doesn't make up for anything."

"Jim, sweetie," The term of endearment sounds so false to Jim's ears. "I understand that you are mad at me, but I have done everything in my power to find you for the past five years, and the away mission I am accepting now doesn't have a high chance of survival. I might not come back from this."

"So you're just checking off an item on your list before you go on this _mission_? Talk with my daughter. Done, next item?"

"Jim, don't be like this," Winona says, her eyes sad.

"Don't be like what?" Jim says flatly. "You made me like this, _mother_ , you put me on this path I walk, you should be _proud_ that I've made it this far on my own."

There is a moment of silence as mother and daughter stare each other down.

"And I am," Winona says, breaking it. "I know I can't make up for what I've done, nor fully understand what you have suffered, Jim, but I think that if I come back, we could meet at a cafe or whatever place young people find fashionable nowadays, and have a nice long chat about what went wrong. How 'bout that?"

Jim thinks about it. She's still upset with her mother after what she did, but she can count the number of times she's seen her mother in person, on one hand, some part of her wanted this, this opportunity to reconnect.

"Yeah sure," Jim says as smoothly as she could. "Just comm me when you get back on Earth."

* * *

Jim comes across a spaceship being built one day. She wants to scoff, building a spaceship in a place where everyone can see isn't safe. Dramatic, _yes_. Safe, _no_. But she stares and stares until her watch, a twentieth-century specimen, chimes.

Winona dies at the end Jim's four-month sabbatical and her body is exhumed in space, with the remains sent back to Earth.

So they won't be having the talk after all.

The blonde doesn't even know if she wanted to collect the urn or not. She still doesn't know what she feels for her mother.

Dad's dead. Mom's dead. Frank's dead. If Sammy died, she'd be the only one left in the Kirk family.

Jim buries the urn just outside her farmhouse, beside the oak tree. She thought Winona would like it there, it had shade and history. She even composes Mother's Waltz and plays it beside the unmarked spot in remembrance. There is little ceremony, she doesn't even know what her mother died of, her records had been sealed.

Winona's property is mailed to her farmhouse. Everything she ever owned took up only two and a half boxes. Photo albums, her clothes, collector edition paperbacks from the 21st century were stowed away into the attic. Jim frames the sketch of her mother she did in what seems like an age ago and hangs it up in the hallway.

It's childlike and spoke of a life that Jim could've had.

She's gonna leave this place forever after a drink.

* * *

Somehow a beautiful girl turned into a bar fight, and the bar fight became the face of Christopher Pike staring down at her.

He hasn't changed much besides the wrinkles and grey hairs. Jim could still see him in her mind's eye, patting her back as she retched into a bowl.

Jim on the other hand, has changed. Without all the blood on her face, Chris was sure she'd be labelled as stunning.

Jim freezes as he mentions her father less than a minute into the conversation. Chris knows he's gotten her attention by now and hurries on. He wasn't about to let a genius, a Kirk no less, get out of signing up for Starfleet.

She's losing interest, her mind is still running on adrenaline and she's thinking about all sorts of different things. Jim laughs when he tells her to enlist and giggles when he says Starfleet could use her if she was half the man her father was.

Her will weakens when he mentions how much she wanted to explore the stars. Spending time on planets wasn't the same as looking at the expanse of space.

 _Your father was a captain of a starship for 12 minutes._

I dare you to do better.

"The female to male starship captain ratio is 14 to 1," Jim huffs. "Not exactly what I would call all-inclusive."

"It's a boys club, I know," Pike admits and leans forward. "But you, Jim, you can change all of that. I know you can."

She sneers. "You don't know me at all."

He can see that Jim is riled up and Pike leaves the bar thinking that if she didn't join immediately, the girl would still have conflicting emotions and talk herself into joining.

He was right. Jim's never one to back down from a dare, much less one from a man who knows his way around a Kirk. She waltzes into the shipyard, cleaned up and the dark bags under her eyes hidden expertly with concealer.

"Four years? Honey, I'll do it in three."

* * *

And she does. Condensing four years worth of command courses into three years is no small task, but Jim does her best.

It's been a while since she's been at school anyway.

She shocks everyone by breaking records, her entrance exam results are leaked before the rest of her classmates are even paying attention to her. Jim has the highest score ever recorded by a human, the only one who had scored higher was a Vulcan.

Suddenly her goal of finishing her courses in three years doesn't seem so far away.

Jim's unflappable. She doesn't pay attention to the snide remarks, she meets everything head-on in a way that makes people call her reckless and insane.

Occasionally she listens to her saner friend, Bones, who knew that blonde girl with a smile that was like the sun coming out was trouble with capitals T-R-O-U-B-L-e. The lowercase e was the last shred of hope he had for her future.

"I don't recall being assigned a roommate," Bones asks with Jim's leather jacket hanging from his grasp. "This is not a co-ed dorm. Why can't you stay in your own room?"

The blonde looks up from where she had been resting on the couch. Her friend hates it, says it was too uncomfortable for his bones to lie on, but she has slept on worst. "I just needed a place to crash."

"Again," Bones replies, tossing the jacket to her. Jim doesn't even bother to catch it. "It's been two long weeks."

"Twelve days, it's hardly been two weeks, Bones," She says with a lazy smile. "But if you're going to kick me out..."

He huffs in frustration. "If I kick you out, you'll just hack into my _single-_ person dorm room for the tenth time."

"Seventh actually."

Bones grunts and crosses his arms. "At least make yourself useful and fix the replicator, Jim. Don't do anything funny with the settings like last month."

"You know, it won't get jammed this often if you didn't try to get bacon and eggs every day," Jim says, sitting up and stretching. "It's a portable model, not a restaurant."

"Humph," Bones gives her a look she's becoming familiar with.

Jim has a certain fondness for the grumpy man. He was a nice friend.

* * *

"I bet you can't do it."

Someone dares her to jump off Golden Gate Bridge, they didn't think she would actually do it, there has to be a limit to Kirk's crazy stunts.

And when she does, with a shit-eating grin on her face and a feral glint in those Kirk-blue eyes as she is pulled out of the ocean by the Coast Guard. The media buzzes about how different the Kelvin baby turned out from her honest, soft-spoken, and hero of a father.

There was no denying that Jim did have a staggering amount of potential, and there was the fact that she was known throughout campus a slut.

She was more successful than the rest of her classmates, despite her laidback attitude, and some boys just couldn't handle it.

It wasn't like she avoided it, somehow creatures of all kinds were attracted to her. Her features were too striking to be labelled beautiful, but there was a devilish charm and an appealing youth to her. Coupled with the way she carried herself like 'she owned the damn place' (said sarcastically by Cadet Uhura, who had had enough of Kirk's strut) and how her hair was the right shade of gold, Jim knew she looked good.

Sex helps keep the nightmares at bay. Jim doesn't care what they say about her flightiness and sexual promiscuity, she has never cheated on anyone, and she would do anything to keep herself from dreaming about Tarsus again.

Those dreams were the worst.

It's all a big blob of nothing at first, Jim's tending to the flowers in Hoshi's garden and chatting with her teacher in soft Japanese. Then it dissolves into Kodos and masked men everywhere, like a twisted kaleidoscope. Always in tune with Thea's harsh screams.

She still feels the pain dancing on her body when she wakes.

* * *

Jim doesn't cry, she never does now, she's shed enough tears for a lifetime. She just carefully unpacks the violin and starts to play.

Some days she makes up mournful melodies for the ones lost on Tarsus, soft chilling tunes that makes Bones want to grab a bottle of bourbon and talk about his life's woes.

Her head hurts and she pushes away those dark memories, losing herself in the music.

Other nights, she sneaks out into the corridors to a maintenance closet and begins to wrench her bow across the strings in the dark, wringing out fierce notes on her violin until it all becomes screeching. Nobody issues an official complaint. He had gifted them all with earplugs in the middle of the year.

Jim doesn't even talk about why she plays the violin in the night, but Bones bets his psych. degrees that it has something to do with the reason she tenses up whenever he gets too close and why she rarely brings up her past.

"Just a thing I had." She would say every time he asked her about the battered stuffed bear on her desk.

She was a good runner too, being one of those early risers who insisted on taking a run in the morning.

Jim tries to convince him to run with her, even going as far as setting seven alarms that made Bones threaten to move out of their shared dorm.

"Exercise is good for you, Bones." She would say, her bottom lip stuck out in a pout. "You're a doctor, shouldn't you know?"

He finally gives in after she points out that he had a bit of belly fat (well they couldn't all live on apples, cinnamon rolls and pure adrenaline like she did) and spends the rest of his three years being woken by Jim flinging clothes at him enthusiastically for a run around campus.

He wishes he had her mind sometimes, Jim had trouble concentrating sure, but she never seemed to study.

The blonde calls it going with the flow, while Bones who saw her IQ score of 173 in her medical files, rolls his eyes and grumbles over his books.

* * *

Jim's the only one left in her family, making her even more precious to Starfleet.

The board overlooks her previous records of bad behavior and focuses on the genius instead. The admirals call her up for meetings at the end of each term to discuss her performance. They ignore the rumors of her having slept with her professors and Pike to get those grades and make sure her time in the Academy is smooth sailing.

Her advisor smooths ruffled feathers and keeps Jim in line as best as he could. She's an asset, as he tells her professors again and again.

She is even enlisted in the training course on the _Farragut_ in her first year. _In her first year, what was the Academy thinking?  
_  
"It's not fair," Nyota complains to her roommate as they read the allocation results. She hates how she sounded like a whiny child, but that was how she felt like when faced with that blonde with that hair and eyes as blue as the Pacific.

"I've worked my ass off for two years and I'm always at the top of my classes; she never turns up to half her classes, falls asleep in the other half of them," Nyota paces the suffocating dorm room restlessly. "How is she still in the top five in every course?"

"That's a bit of an exaggeration." Galia drawls, looking up from her engineering homework at the mention of her crush.

Then again, the Orion had crushes all around. Her roommate blamed her natural pheromones.

"It doesn't make sense." Nyota continues.

It was just like Kirk to sashay into the academy and be presented immediately with opportunities any ambitious cadet only ever dreamt of having.

"From what I hear, Jim Kirk doesn't make any sense," Galia says with a dreamy smile on her face. "Do you think I should ask her out?"

Nyota scoffs and closes the tab on her PADD.

* * *

"You have his eyes." Captain Delaney, who had served with her father, says with a small smile during a shift. "Such a rare colour."

He is looking at her somewhat assessingly, but not so predatory as to set off alarms in Jim's head.

An engineering student once called her eyes warp-core blue- an unsettling, unearthly colour. So she stares the man down until he makes his excuses and leaves.

Jim still likes it in space, having spent most of her time traveling before this. It wasn't as fun being an ensign though, and she could get a taste of what it was like working on a starship. However, there was just something so boring about the routine. The experience would've been better if Bones was here, being all grumpy and unimpressed.

"I wish it was more interesting." She remarks to the other cadets who look at her in surprise and carefully masked irritation.

"You're in actual space," Jessica Hart, third-year communications, points out. "How is it not the most interesting thing happening in your life?"

Jim only sighs and wishes there was a window in the mess hall for her to stare out of.

* * *

And then they are suddenly attacked by Klingon birds-of-prey, _actual_ Klingon birds-of-prey, which were cloaked and all. The captain of the three ships turned out to be a pirate, who had stolen them from the empire and were looking to steal a Federation ship.

Delaney tries to reason with them, Jim knows reason can't be used against pirates but keeps the shields up. Her thoughts are running at miles per second, trying to dissect the situation.

 _They hadn't covered this in her classes in the Academy._

The pirate captain, a man with slicked back dark hair and an easy smile hanging on the corner of his mouth, ends negotiations. The pirates have insulted him and made threats that Jim knew they could keep. Klingons had some pretty good weaponry, and there's no telling what modifications the pirates made to the birds-of-prey.

Delaney turns to Jim, who had stared at him silently throughout the whole exchange with her intense eyes and decides.

"Fire at-" Delaney begins before he is cut off by tactics.

"Reporting hull breaches in Deck 5, 6, 14 and 21." Cadet Ensign Park informs urgently.

"Dispatch teams to deal with it, seal all turbolifts and doors."

"Yes, sir." He nods.

"Kirk, fire at the ships."

"Sir, they're recloaking, no weapons on board this vessel are advanced enough to detect the bird-of-preys."

"What happened to it being just a training cruise?" Delaney rubs his temples.

"I could just guess, sir." Jim shrugs, her fingers already flying over the console.

"We don't have enough torpedoes to support guessing. And who could've guessed space pirates would target a Federation vessel?"

"They've jammed our frequencies, sir." Cadet Wilson speaks from her station, one hand on her headset. "I can't get a distress signal through to Starfleet command."

"The security teams have all been wiped out, Sir." Park's voice is shaking, his roommate, Nadia, was one of those lost. "They're heading for the bridge."

"Damn." Delaney sighs. "Looks like it's a good time to guess, Ensign."

"Yessir." Jim clicks a few buttons. "Torpedoes locked and armed."

"Aimed at what? You can't just guess!" Wilson, who had heard of Jim Kirk's antics and reputation for unhinged genius, protests. She didn't actually believe Captain Delaney would agree to it.

"Captain's orders." The blonde shrugs. At the woman's questioning glance, she adds. "Look, there's an engine on those ships okay. Maro, see if you could find some exhaust fumes."

The Cardassian science officer does it without a question.

"You should hurry up, they're coming up our way." Park's voice wavers slightly. "It's like they're clawing through the floors."

"Okay." Jim exhales. "Fire!"

Two torpedoes zip tears into a bird-of-prey, causing it to decloak. Jim gets ready to arm the next ones when she's stopped by a firewall.

"They've hacked into our system. Life support's being shut down." Another cadet ensign, Merill Jaden, yells from his station.

"On it." Jim rises from her seat to take her place in Jaden's, who lets her have it without a word, ashamed to say it was programming he had never seen before. She's somewhere at the halfway stage of taking down the virus when the banging starts.

She ignores it, focused on finishing her job. The air was getting a little thin in the bridge. Jim has to keep everyone alive.

"Incoming!" The first officer yells, switching his phaser from stun to kill.

The pirates break in, Jim tunes out the noises of the fight. Delaney is shouting for the cadets to run.

The cadets try to fend them off, but the lack of air was getting to them and the pirates had gas masks on.

Jim, having the hindsight to prepare herself for an attack, inhales deeply and fights them. Shooting them with her phaser and brandishing the knife she always kept in her boot. She manages to force them into the turbolift, but not before one of them gives her one heck of a concussion.

Blinking stars out of her eyes, Jim pounces on the terminal, she's never worked so fast in her life. There were still life signs on board, about one hundred and thirty-six in total, understaffed for the training cruise that just happened to pass a trading route.

She's hard-pressed for time, turns out the gas masks weren't designed for her human anatomy, just her luck. Jim breaks through in two minutes, her head spinning like her brain was doing backflips inside her skull.

 _Life support systems online.  
_  
Jim quickly checks to see if the crew was alright, Park and Wilson were staring at the ceiling with glazed over eyes, three were still breathing. The first officer was still.

"It's not over yet." Delaney was speaking, his voice strained. Jim could see the scorch marks on his chest. _Oh no_. "Be like your father."

She collapses into the captain's chair for a moment, gathering her thoughts. The turbolift doors would give away soon, the pirates would take over the Farragut, and the cadets that made up a healthy chunk of this year's graduate class would die or be taken hostage and then be killed.

Either way, she was trapped.

There _was_ a third option, but Jim wondered who would be crazy enough to try it.

 _(She is.)_

She causes the turbolift to shoot back down and goes back to the birds-of-prey. She wipes the system clean completely, in case they wanted to tamper with the mainframe again.

She fires everything they've got at them, weakening their shields and causing significant damage. They fire back, the shields are at twenty-two percent, Jim prays they weren't going to die.

She aims for the bridge, the engineering deck especially, hanging on the hope that the pirates didn't even know what they were doing with those ships.

* * *

It all works out in the end, in a way Jim never thought would be remotely possible. She breaks out of this no-win scenario victorious.

Somehow at the last minute, two of the ships give in and the captain announces his unconditional surrender.

"This is the _U.S.S. Farragut_. We have at twenty or so torpedoes armed and ready to fire at the remaining vessel unless you surrender willingly." Jim speaks clearly.

"Who am I speaking to?" The captain rasps out, his smile completely gone.

"Cadet Ensign James T. Kirk." Jim's mouth is set into a hard line.

"The warrior who destroyed two of my ships, you are just an ensign?" He grinds out, his voice sounding robotic through the mask he was wearing.

"I guess you could call me Acting Captain now." She says bitterly and sits down in the captain's chair.

"Then perhaps surrendering to a woman would not be so bad when she is a captain." The alien makes a keening sound, maybe he was laughing. "Though I am told that James is usually a name given to men."

"My father named me James." Jim sits up a little bit straighter, keeping her posture. "So that makes James a girl's name."

"And you are a relentless woman, two of my ships, Klingon birds-of-prey, difficult to acquire prizes, turned to scrap singlehandedly." He says flatly. "James T. Kirk, you have my respect."

The pirates drop the jamming frequencies and she finally contacts with command.

They send aid to the quadrant and the pirates are taken away quietly. The hundred and thirty six had been reduced to ninety-eight, some of the sadistic ones had executed them, shooting cadets and officers alike in the head messily, while Jim was wiping the system and returning fire at the pirates.

That was when she completely shut down.

She's sitting in the captain's chair when the rescuers find her, her head bowed. Surrounding her were the remains of the carnage caused by the pirates, and Jim's numb as a hypo finds it way into her neck.

* * *

She's awarded a Starfleet Medal of Honour for her service, Jim doesn't think she wanted to keep it in a place where she could see it daily. She'll stuff it into a drawer and try to forget about it.

The newly minted captain of the _Farragut_ , Gavorrick, pins it to her dress uniform and salutes her. Her body reacts on its own accord, snapping to attention. Jim's gotten a good deal thinner since the _Farragut_ , and the hollowness of her features was evident even with makeup on. With her hair pulled into a chignon, she looks severe, drawn and nothing like herself as she thanks Gavorrick.

"You did well." He offers her hollow praise and moves onto Merill.

Uhura is there too, with a cute Orion next to her, looking like she wanted to say something. Jim pushes past them without a word, she was too tired to banter with her today.

There was still half a semester to go on the _Farragut_. Jim, who's all about facing her fears ( _really_ ), doesn't quit the course. She's given a week of leave before she's off to space all over again, with the weight of the dead thirty-eight men and women on her shoulders.

The Medal of Honour is the same one her father was awarded post-mortem. _Be like your father._ Those were Delaney's last words.

Well, she's one step closer to being like him now.

The deceased crew and cadets are given awards for their bravery in the sacrifices they had made, though there was nothing brave about dying with a phaser blast to the head.

 _It was too much like Tarsus.  
_  
Pike congratulates her, pride and worry mixing in his eyes. He's seen Jim at her worst, but the utter expressionlessness of her features scares him.

"How she survived and saved all those people is nothing short of a miracle." Pike tells McCoy. "Keep an eye on her for me, won't you?"

"Yes, Sir." He nods solemnly, watching his friend smile forcedly. "I'll take care of her."

The media sing her praises, comparing her to George Kirk again. Then they say how hard she was trying to be like her late father.

Jim just wants them to make up their minds, was she a George Kirk wannabe or a hero in her own right? She's still waiting for them to decide.

* * *

"Stop tryin' to fix me, Bones." Jim scowls after getting into a fight at the bar early in the night. They had been kicked out and were now nursing a bottle of bourbon between them in their new two-person dorm room.

Well she was doing all of the drinking, he had to be sober for this. She hisses as he tweezes shards of glass out of her wounds.

It's the first time he's seen her in person for months and Jim's death wish seems to have grown exponentially.

"You don't need any fixing, darlin'." The endearment slips out of his mouth, causing Jim to smile. "But you have to stop being such a hothead, Jim."

Jim blames their deaths on herself, she could've been faster, the words on the screens had been blurry, but her sight had been tested to be perfect.

"It was my fault." She admits after he finished wrapping her damaged hands in gauze. "I-they didn't deserve it. I should've tried to help, but I couldn't. And here I was, thinking that I was so smart."

 _It's not your fault,_ Bones comforts her as she finally breaks down.

He takes her new spectacles off, dries her tears and embraces her. Jim clings to him, her fingers weak as she sobs into his arms.

It's the first time she's ever cried since the day Sam ran away.

It's strange to see the strongest woman he knows sniffling in front of him, her blue eyes even bluer when she cried. Jim's not a messy crier, like most women he knew, who treat tears like some sort of dramatic moment or a weapon (Jocelyn cried because she knew Leonard was raised to be a gentleman who wouldn't let a woman suffer), she's eerily silent as the tears trail down her cheeks, sniffing once a while.

Jim has a self-deprecating smile on her face as she weeps like she couldn't believe she was crying.

"Sometimes I'm just tired, ya know, 'cause everyone expects me to be like my dad for some reason," Jim says, lying on her bed.

"You're nothing like your father, kid." Bones says, one arm slung over his pillow. The doctor became somewhat of a cuddler when he was drunk and was currently holding onto his pillow tightly.

"Be like your father." Jim slurs into her blankets. "I'll never meet him. I can't be like him."

"Trust me, you aren't. Don't listen to any of them."

"You believe in all this 'everyone is unique' crap, Bones?"

He doesn't reply.

"I'm not the second George Kirk, I'm not the second anything. I'm the first me." Jim continues, her eyes red from crying. "Haters can go to hell."

"Yes." Bones agrees, having never met anyone quite like her. "You are."

* * *

 **Author's note:**

 **Another chapter done- the longest chapter yet, at least 5700 words. Star Trek isn't mine.**

 **So I did some research and Frank is actually Jim's stepfather (in AOS credits) so I need to revise the other chapters that mention him too. Just when I have time, anyway.**

 **In TOS, it is said that Jim Kirk did some years on the Farragut before taking over the Enterprise. I am in the Kelvin timeline of Star Trek, so she's on the Farragut only for a training cruise. No ordinary person can do what Jim had done on the Farragut, all that math while suffering a concussion.**

 **I don't think I used a lot of dialogue, but hopefully this chapter was good. Next time more about the Enterprise. Thanks for reading and reviewing. :)**

 _ **(Revised 7/1/18.)**_

 **(Second update: 7/30/2018. This just keeps getting longer and longer. And that is a great quote from the amazing Helen Keller.)**


	6. A Study in the No-Win Scenario

**Chapter 5**

 **A Study in the No-Win Scenario**

 _"I don't believe in the no-win scenario."_

 _James T. Kirk, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan_

* * *

 _One_.

Jim Kirk is feeling good.

She's currently on her fifth drink of the night, enough to give her a delightful buzz, and the guy sitting alone at one of the tables is smiling at her.

"Jimmy!" Her Academy drinking buddy, a lusciously curved brunette called Katie, pipes up. She had always been such a lightweight. "You nervous for tomorrow?"

"What's for tomorrow?" Jim feigns forgetfulness. She knows exactly what was going to happen tomorrow.

For some reason, this sets off a round of laughs and Maxwell, a communications student, speaks, looping an arm around her shoulders. "Of course, the great James Kirk would definitely pass the unbeatable!"

Jim hides her discomfort behind a smile. "I'll certainly do my best."

The blonde knows this test- _the_ test, was impossible. She has heard her fellow cadets complain and sometimes cry over the toughest test of their student career. There was a reason the Kobayashi Maru was off-limits to the lower classes. Jim wonders if the instructors were failing them on purpose.

"Did you hear that?" Maxwell whoops. "She says she'll do her best!"

"Might as well give up already, Kirk." Felicity, a redhead from the New University of London, leers. She had failed the Tactician Class II exam the year before, which was seen as a warm-up exercise to the _Maru_. "It's too damn hard even for you."

"You're just being bitter, Felicity." She had also recently failed the impossible test, and was drowning her sorrows in a ridiculously overpriced bottle of scotch.

Jim decides to ignore them and stands, wishing that she hadn't worn heels tonight. She sets a course straight to the handsome stranger and sits down beside him. "Hi, I'm Jim."

The smile grows. "I'm Tommy."

* * *

They don't end up having sex, but she does manage to land a drunken kiss on the corner of Tommy's full mouth. Jim had been aiming for the cheek.

Bones is back from his redeye shift and Jim, being a notoriously light sleeper, opens her eyes lazily to watch him.

They stare at each other for a moment, and in the dimness of the room, Jim thought she could see him smile. _What? No sex tonight?_

"It's quiet." He says gruffly, looking away.

Jim makes a soft noise of agreement and turns to the other side of her bed.

* * *

Jim couldn't deny she was attracted to the man, who was in town for business only.

Her hazy mind recalled some details, how Tommy was a scientist being interviewed for a two year-long job on a space station, how he was currently finding out how to increase crop yields in some distant field in Idaho.

And she wants to see him again. Jim has his number and a headache but no last name. She feels like she had seen him before, but curse her stupid drink-addled brain to forget Tommy's face. She tries not to think about the familiar name.

"Are you excited for the test?" Jim asks Bones during their early morning run. More of a walk in his case, as the poor man hadn't even had his coffee yet.

The good doctor snorts. Jim takes that as a _no_.

"You look like you could need some caffeine." She says, doubling back to stroll beside him.

"Can't say no to that." Bones grinds out, his whole body was hunched over in exhaustion.

"Must've been one hell of a shift." Jim teases.

He doesn't answer, only stares into the distance, the sun lighting up the mahogany streaks in his dark hair. They walk the rest of the way in comfortable silence.

She adds cream to his coffee, Bones was adamant that his coffee shouldn't have too much or too little cream. As usual, she heaps a whole spoonful into the dark liquid, knowing that her friend's coffee-deprived brain could hardly tell the difference.

* * *

 _He does tell the difference, or rather he takes one look at Jim's offering and shakes his head._

" _I'm not your maid, Bones!" Jim stomps into their small kitchen._

" _Then stop getting coffee wrong!" He yells at her as she goes to the replicator to make another cup for him._

" _People are dying, Bones." She shoves a fresh cup of steaming coffee, with no cream this time, at him._

* * *

She takes one look at the simulation room and shakes her head. The whole vibe is off- it's her woman's intuition.

Jim knows she will have to do her best, or else she would fail this test in a spectacular fashion.

It all starts well, but doesn't everything?

"Do we have to go?" Jim mutters as they receive the distress call. Bones shoots her a look and she sighs, forcing some brightness into her voice. "Allons-y!"

She watches as the ship explodes into teeny-tiny pieces, everything had been done perfectly, right down to the course set. And every last computer-generated person on the Kobayashi Maru still died.

Everyone turns to look at her, gauging her reaction to her failure. Her classmates share knowing looks with each other, some credits change hands.

Jim gets to her feet, she wasn't feeling angry at her makeshift crew, she wasn't sure she felt much at this point. She didn't win, but they weren't testing her on that. They were testing her character, if it was real, they would've been playing with human lives, she decides that she hates this test.

Nobody gets to decide who lives and who dies, and she'd be damned if she didn't do anything that was in her power. Jim realizes that she was panting and inhales deeply, messaging the bridge of her nose.

She pats the captain's chair and looks up at the glass-encased observation room. "I'll be back."

* * *

 _Two._

"Jim." Bones catches up with her after her navigation class. _News sure spreads fast._ "Are you sure?"

"Oh, it's you." Jim's voice is nonchalant. He feels like something has changed in her demeanour, she had gotten colder somewhat, retreating back into the mask she had worn in the aftermath of the _Farragut_ incident.

"Are you alright?" He says, after getting her attention with a cough.

"I'm fine." Jim smiles, but it's without her usual glow.

"You've heard?"

"I'm James T. Kirk, Bones." Jim huffs. "I'm the one who started the rumours you're referring to."

"Even the one about you desecrating the simulation room with Cadet Maxwell last night, which is why no one will ever be able to take the test again?"

Jim lets out a sharp bark of laughter. "That's not true. Maxwell just wants to sleep with me."

"Are they really giving you a second chance?"

Jim glances at him in her peripherals, Bones seemed to be genuinely curious. "Well, I've talked to Pike, he says they'll think about it."

The blonde knows they will, because for the first time in three years, Jim Kirk has shown some interest in her school work. Or that's the reason she goes with. She knows they just want her to fail again.

Jim isn't going to give up. The Kobayashi Maru is a complex situation, to be handled delicately like a game of chess. Every move could make the game worse than before. To think that a computer program got her so riled up.

"Say, Bones?" Her friend turns to look at her, Jim flips her plait over one shoulder. "Do you know how to play chess?"

* * *

"I wish I said no." Bones grumbles as Jim beats him for the third time in the hour they've played.

"Don't be a sore loser." Jim chides, her blue eyes sweeping the board for any weaknesses. "You're actually quite good."

Bones crosses his arms as Jim takes his king once more. _Checkmate_. "Let's play Monopoly."

The triumphant look on Jim's face is replaced by a scowl as she quickly recalls how their last game ended. Bones had won, but only after reading the rule book. His roommate had retaliated the following morning by childishly hiding his boots.

Jim's competitive side is stirred up. "You're on."

* * *

While Jim had certainly not forgotten about Tommy and his soft green eyes, she also would not let Galia out of her sight.

Brains and beauty were always a weakness of hers.

"Your roommate hates me." Jim says, tracing patterns into Galia's emerald skin.

"Uhura?" Galatia murmurs. "She doesn't hate you, she just won't sleep with you."

"I don't mind." Jim honestly didn't, and as Bones would say: _a little humility is good for the soul._

"I think she's actually flattered by the attention."

"Oh is she?" Jim sincerely doubts that, Uhura was good to banter with, but she wouldn't go so far as to say the dark-skinned woman looked forward to their conversations.

"Are you?" Jim says to Galia, remembering seeing the Orion looking at her beside Uhura while she flirted with the student.

" _Duh_." Galia huffs, indignant that Jim would think otherwise.

"Hey Galia?" Jim pokes a finger into the small of the Orion's back. "What do you know about the Kobayashi Maru?"

* * *

"Are you sure, Jim?" Pike's gaze is assessing.

"Yes." The answer comes out rushed.

"Have you thought this through?"

Jim nods, smiling winningly, because if she had anything, it was the title of the Queen of _Fake It Til You Make It_.

Pike lets out a world-weary breath. He's gotten older since the blonde entered the academy, dealing with all of her shenanigans knocked a few years out of him. Half her teachers don't know how to deal with her and settles for ignoring Jim, the other half is too invested in her education- Bones blames his own ulcer on her.

"Not a single person has ever passed this test."

"I know."

"You should know that the program itself is designed to be unbeatable."

"I know."

"The creator is a Vulcan."

"I know." She replies.

"Nothing's going to stop you, am I right?"

"Yes, sir."

He signs the document she was holding out with a flourish, Jim reads the messy signature, looks at Christopher Pike's exhausted face, and adds as an afterthought.

"Thank you, sir."

* * *

"You're smiling." Bones says.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious." Jim rolls her eyes.

"Let me rephrase that, you are smiling before the test."

Jim's voice takes on an offended tone. "What? So now it's illegal to be happy that I'm sharing such a beautiful morning with the greatest, most extraordinary roommate on the planet?"

"Are you angry because I beat you at Monopoly again?"

"I swear you will not best me once again, Leonard Hamish McCoy." Jim wags a finger at him.

"I just did." Bones points at the board on the floor and the scattered paper money surrounding it, not even bothering to correct his middle name.

She makes a face. "That was yesterday."

Jim does a twirl, sending the papers flying, she practically _sings_ out. "Today is a new beginning!"

"You're ruining the game."

She flashes him a demure look from under her long lashes. "It's not my fault no one cleaned up."

Bones lets out an exasperated sigh as Jim whirls around the room with more enthusiasm than he's seen in days. "Women."

She stops and smiles at him angelically. "Men."

* * *

Jim likens the test to zugzwang, every move she made left her worse than before, she liked to pretend she had choices, but every decision she made would lead to the inevitable item.

She hated no-win scenarios.

"Captain?" One of the test takers asks tentatively. "Are we going to evacuate?"

"Wish this bloody game would let me negotiate with the Klingons." Jim says darkly, swivelling around in her chair while the ship's shields steadily weaken.

Her head was hurting, Jim wills the pounding to stop and clutches the arms of her chair. She wanted to get out of this room, it was entirely dissimilar but at the same time her mind was making parallels out of this situation with something else.

"Ram the ship into the Kobayashi Maru." She orders, her eyes are barely slits.

"You can't be serious, Kirk." Felicity, who had asked to be assigned to this test if it meant her own mark wouldn't be affected, protests. "You aren't your father."

"Did I stutter?" Jim's snaps, her fingers drumming on her leg. "All choices lead to death, so why not?"

"Do it." She says firmly.

There is a steely undertone to Jim's words that prompt the navigational officer to set a _collision course_ to the ships without further questioning.

The cadets watch with bated breath as they head straight for the Klingon ships. Jim likes the explosion at the end, it felt very real.

 _They run and run and the fire eats some of them up but they have to keep on going._

Jim doesn't stay in the mock bridge afterwards, she literally flees from the too small examination room. Her ears are ringing.

 _Run until they run out of steam. Run until they are stopped._

She runs into the nearest toilet and throw up the contents of today's breakfast into the bowl. This had been a rash decision, even by her standards. Jim hadn't even thought it out clearly.

Not for the first time, she wondered why hadn't she listened to Pike.

She knows she's going to take the test again, to prove something, to win. Her gut tells her _third time's a charm_.

* * *

 _Three._

Leonard McCoy tells her that she's a glutton for punishment, that going into the Kobayashi Maru without a plan was about as useful as a steering wheel on a mule.

She wants to tell him that there was no way to plan for life-or-death situations in reality and that the whole test forces students into no-win situations with no follow back on psychological damage.

Jim wants to tell him all those things, because they're alone in the dorm and she knows Bones wouldn't judge her like the others.

Instead she says. "I'm doing it again."

Bones' tirade grinds to a halt before he picks it up again with more fervor than ever. "Are you crazy? There's no way they'll let you take the test again. You must be out of your _goddamn_ mind if you think you can beat it, no one has and it's time to face the truth. You're good, Jim, but Pike said it himself, the whole thing is programmed to be unbeatable."

Jim retorts. "There's more than one way to skin a cat."

"Now don't you dare use my metaphors against me."

"Don't blame me." Jim lets her accent come out. "I'm just a southerner born 'n raised in Iowa."

"I hope you know what you're doing." Bones rubs his face with a hand after a moment, deciding he was much too old to deal with this. Best let Jim get her way.

"I hope you'll be there when I take it again."

Bones scoffs, as though the idea is so far-fetched he couldn't believe it. "Count me out of this."

"Hmmph." The blonde pouts and grabs her jacket, she wants to see Galia.

* * *

The first time, Jim is curious.

The second time, Jim is desperate.

The third time, Jim is confident.

Bones opens his mouth to say something at breakfast and she quickly speaks before he has the chance to. "Yes, I'm smiling. It's a fine day."

"The curtains are closed. You were up working all night."

The dark circles under Jim's eyes are skillfully hidden with makeup that Bones was close enough to see. "I can see the sunlight. It's a beautiful morning."

"You should eat something." He advises softly, Jim had only gone through two cups of coffee today without a single bite to eat.

"Not hungry."

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

"I'm not hungry." She repeats and continues to type on her PADD.

"Are you messaging someone?"

"Galia." Jim says, not looking up.

"Galia?" Bones peeks over her shoulder to look at the messages on Jim's screen. The long strings of hearts that usually accompany those texts are missing from the responder.

"We are trying to do something serious." Jim replies to his unasked question, shifting to hide her PADD screen.

"I hope it's not illegal."

"No." Then a pause. "Yes. Maybe, I haven't checked."

Bones stares at her and raises an eyebrow. "You really want to win, don't you?"

Jim nods determinedly. Bones wonders if she had heard any of the things the less friendly cadets say about her and this third try.

"It's a no-win scenario. I either lose, or I _lose_."

Jim was too cryptic for his taste without her breakfast. "Eat an apple, for Pete's sake, you're starting to sound like a preacher on a Wednesday."

* * *

When he said to eat an apple, he didn't mean she should actually eat an apple during the test.

Jim is munching loudly on her apple, making appreciative noises while their ship loiters around, a fair distance away from Klingon ships attacking civilians.

"Aren't you going to do anything about it, Jim?" He asks after Uhura relays her message.

"Hmm." Jim's eyes sparkle as she taps her chin thoughtfully. "That's okay."

"That's okay?" His voices raises a pitch.

"Yeah, don't worry about it." Jim says with a carefree smile and she focuses on her apple, because apparently food was more important than saving lives.

In an effort to make his friend act seriously for once, he adds. "Three more Klingon warbirds are decloaking and targeting our ship."

Jim tunes all of them out, internally crossing her fingers and hoping the little hiccup she and Galia created ('our baby' the Orion had said) would work.

"Alert medical bay to receive all crew members from the damaged ship." She says with another bite of her snack.

"And how do you expect us to rescue them when we're surrounded by Klingons, _Captain_?" Uhura makes a feeble attempt at deflecting orders- Jim'll have to work on that.

"Alert medical." Jim says simply and turns back to the screen.

She finishes off her apple and brings out a bag from her pocket. Bones' eyebrows disappear into his hair. "Can you stop eating for a moment and fire back?"

Jim smiles. "No."

"Of course not." He huffs.

The screens flicker and the lights go out for just a second. Jim hides a smirk behind her cinnamon roll.

Jim meets the pilot's eyes without hesitation. "Arm photons, and prepare to fire on all energy ships."

"Yes, Captain."

"Jim, their shields are still up." Bones points out.

The blonde exhales and brushes some imaginary crumbs off her pants. "Are they?"

Jim watches it all with a victorious glint in her eyes as the Klingon ships are turned to dust. She rises to her feet and sweeps the room with her blue irises.

"So, we've managed to eliminate all enemy ships." Dear god, she was _preening_. "No one onboard was injured, and I have completed the most important meal of the day."

She said the last part with a slap on Bones' shoulder.

"The successful rescue of the Kobayashi Maru crew is underway." She beams. "Great job, everyone."

* * *

 _Afterwards_.

"How did you do it?" Bones demands as soon as they leave the room.

Jim drops her smile and her face turns strained. "I can't tell you, Bones."

"My god, woman, are you an idiot?" It dawns on him. "You could risk getting kicked out of school, just to prove some stupid test wrong."

"It was worth it."

He sputters. "Worth it?"

"I don't believe in no-win scenarios."

Bones shakes his head in disbelief. "If you think you can hide this from the professors, you're wrong."

Jim puts a hand on his arm. "Don't worry about that Bones, it's all on me."

"Oh my god, Jim." Katie squeals as they pass her. Jim pauses, they knew already?

"We have to celebrate!" Lena, a command major, exclaims. "You can bring Doctor Sexy."

"Do you want to come?" Jim turns to the doctor with a laugh. "It'll be fun."

Bones, slightly pleased at being called Doctor Sexy, shakes his head. "I have an appointment."

"With who?" Jim frowns.

"With a socially unacceptable glass of scotch." He replied darkly.

* * *

Jim sure did cut a striking figure in her cadet uniform. She was one of the few girls in the academy who could pull off the red pants. Bones knows that Jim was wearing the personally tailored version of the uniform today from her legs.

Even after she was called out, Jim walks like she was on the way to some fancy function, all eyes were on her, and Bones could see her familiar crooked smile.

"Is there anything you would like to say before we begin, sir?"

"Yes," Jim answers breathily. "I believe I have the right to face my accuser directly."

Her eyes follow the Vulcan as he rises to face her. Jim had the urge to giggle at the almost sweet-looking but far too outdated bangs he sported. That or she could rip them off.

"Step forward, please. This is Commander Spock." Barnett says. "He's one of our most distinguished graduates. He's programmed the Kobayashi Maru exam for the last four years. Commander?"

 _Spock_. Jim tries in her head, that reminded her too much of-

She mentally slaps herself to get her mind out of the gutter. The Vulcan was speaking, she had to pay attention.

"Cadet Kirk, you somehow managed to install and activate a subroutine to the programming code, thereby changing the conditions of the test."

Jim leans forward, bracing herself on the lectern. "Your point being?"

"In academic vernacular, you cheated."

Jim bestows upon him one of her most innocent looks. "The test itself is a cheat, isn't it? You programmed it to be unbeatable. In the test, the circumstances we face are very high, life and death, right? Students are faced with an array of choices, all leading to the same outcome."

"Your argument precludes the possibility of a no-win scenario."

"And I don't like to lose, Commander." Jim smiles, baring her teeth. "The Kobayashi Maru is a test of character, how a cadet reacts to the inevitability of death. Some of you might think that I haven't managed to grasp the point of the simulation yet."

"Then you have not only violated the rules, you have also failed to grasp the principle lesson."

"Perhaps I can borrow a phrase from your culture and call my actions 'highly illogical'." Jim says, her voice soft. "The test is unfair, I believe the idea of your no-win scenario to be ludicrous. I did not change the program of the test to win, but I made it winnable."

"So you admit that you cheated?" Barnett pushes.

Jim drags out her words slowly. "I fought back in a way that made sense."

She turns to Spock. "Enlighten us on the purpose of the test, Commander."

He replies in that monotone of his. "The purpose is to experience fear. Fear in the face of certain death. To accept that fear, and maintain control of oneself and one's crew. This is a quality expected in every Starfleet captain."

"Anyway," Jim's hands are fists, her nails digging into her skin. "I saved the crew of the Kobayashi Maru, and I did it with no casualties. I presume this is the superior objective to your little no-win 'game'."

"The Kobayashi Maru is bad ethical decision making at its best." Jim couldn't resist the slight dig at the Vulcan. "You think that an unwinnable situation can educate students. I found a better approach to the problem."

Spock's face is pale, his eyes stern. "We do not test you on problem-solving skills, Cadet Kirk."

"I can argue that I have achieved a much higher goal, thanks to your test, Commander, I have had the opportunity to develop my own critical thinking skills." She goes on. "Facing the choice between the needs of the many, or the needs of the few, we need to come up with clever ways to rationalize ourselves."

Bones could see where this was heading, straight into _not good_ territory.

"It trains us to think of ethics as a simple game of chess, and not as a matter of life and death. The Kobayashi Maru is emotionally cruel and doesn't teach us how to face an awful choice properly." Jim reasons. "If we are measuring wins and losses by the outcome we produced, people could end up morally compromised."

"A Captain cannot cheat death." Spock says.

"I'm sorry?" Jim glances at the Vulcan, whose face was twitching with anger. She half-wonders if he was not a full-blooded Vulcan, because she could see micro-expressions dancing across his face second by second.

"You of all people should know. Your father George Kirk was killed in action after assuming command of his vessel."

She slaps the table twice, making some jump at the noise. "Don't modulate the key, and not debate with me!"

Jim grits her teeth. He was impassive, observing her reaction. "Bringing up my family is a low blow and entirely beside the point, Commander."

The blonde is about to come up the piece de resistance when an aide rushes to Barnett's side and hands something to him.

"We've received a distress call from Vulcan." Barnett explains. "With our primary fleet engaged in the Laurentian system, I hereby order all cadets to report to Hangar One immediately."

Jim could barely read any emotion coming off from Spock, his home planet had just been targeted and he looked as cool as he had in the past few minutes. They meet eyes for a moment, blue and brown. He is the first to look away, and she counts that as a small victory.

"Dismissed."

"Who was that pointy-eared bastard?" Jim asks Bones, her cheeks pinked.

"I don't know, but I like him."

Jim punches him in the arm, making him wince. "Traitor."

"You had a point though, about the emotional pain it causes," Bones says, rubbing the sore spot on his arm. "And that hurt."

"Good enough." She sniffs and beckons for him to follow her out of the auditorium.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

 **Happy Chinese New Year!**

 **If it's one quote that I think simply sums up Jim Kirk's personality, it's the one I put in the beginning. It tells you a lot about her character, like the fact that she's never willing to give up. I originally planned to skip ahead to the ending of Star Trek (2009), but one of the guest reviewers said that she would like to see Spock introduced in the hearing. I did some research into the Kobayashi Maru, I can see why Jim thinks it's unfair.**

 **Tommy (isn't that name familiar?) is my potential love interest for her, but they aren't getting together at the end of the story.**

 **Thanks for reading and please review! :)**

 **Updated with more stuff: 7/27/2018, near midnight, Hong Kong time**


	7. The Future Begins

**Chapter 6:**

 **The Future Begins**

Jim's ascent to the chair is said to be an easy one.

A lot of people think it was because she had a friend who was willing to sacrifice his career to get her on the ship, her academic advisor was captain of said ship, and her on-the-spot promotion was just a case of being in the right place, at the right time.

They overlook the fact that she's just saved the whole Earth from Nero, a time-travelling Romulan, avenging her father in the meantime.

Jim's captaincy lasts for three days and then she's back at the academy, on probation and predicts the rest of her Starfleet career would revolve around a hangar tower in deep space.

And the worst part is how she was swamped by the press as she gets off the _Enterprise_. Jim has never liked the cameras and probably never would. She's the only one who gets asked the questions, the public needs a hero, and no one was more suited to the role than the Kelvin baby.

She's featured in every news article (' _Kirk Strikes Again_ ' ' _Jim Kirk: Saviour of Earth_ ' being her two favourites) and even does a few photo shoots. It make her feel angry at how the people of Earth escaped death and were more focused on Jim than the destruction of Vulcan.

An entire species has just lost their homes. She was graduating, Galia and hundreds of others were not.

Jim's constantly being hounded by the paparazzi, who have labelled her the most eligible bachelorette on the planet. She tries to get away from them but the reporters are relentless. They didn't need this, half of her graduate class was slaughtered because of Nero, and what mattered was her apparent relationship with her roommate. The irrelevancy made her want to laugh.

The academy grounds seems empty without most of this year's graduates, the lecture halls aren't full anymore, there is no laughter or inside jokes. The first and second years try to hide their looks at her when she passes. Jim's being hailed as a hero, but when she walks down the corridors, they confine her. It was stifling before but now the Academy is too small to hold Jim Kirk.

* * *

"Commander Spock." Barnett greets him in his office and waves at the chair in front of his desk. "Please take a seat."

Spock walks stiffly to the chair and sits, back straight and staring directly at him intensely. "Admiral, to what do I owe the pleasure of being called to your presence?"

"How are you holding up, Spock?" Barnett asks first, out of sympathy for the Vulcan.

"I am 'up' because I have a functioning spine, Admiral," He replies monotonously.

Barnett isn't sure if it would be polite to roll his eyes, so glances away before carrying on. "I have summoned you to ask you if you are still considering pressing charges against Cadet James Tiberius Kirk for her academic dishonesty, Commander."

"Cadet Kirk has played a vital part in defeating Nero and saving Earth, demonstrating remarkable ingenuity and leadership skills." He stands and paces restlessly while the Vulcan watches impassively. "In the recent month, after the Narada incident, she has shown improvements in all of her classes, this is a Kirk who is _finally_ trying, Commander, it's like she was just playing in the past three years of her studies. Always top three percent of course, but now she has to be taken off the curve in every one her assessments."

"She's even taken up teaching in her spare time and students under her have shown an average improvement of four percent. Cadet Kirk is one of the most- if not _the_ most- troublesome and useful students we have. Honestly there's a bet that she wouldn't make it to the end of this month without collapsing around here with the way she's been working. " Barnett shakes his head and turns to Spock. "Captain Pike is recommending that we give her the flagship after she graduates."

"She's become an integral part of the Academy after the _Narada_ incident. The admiralty has already decided to say yes." He finishes and waits.

"Are you requesting my opinion on this matter, Admiral Barnett?" Spock says after a moment of silence. In his mind, images of expressive blue eyes and a taunting sneer appear. _You never loved her._

"You _was_ her first officer, Commander." Barnett says. "I've read your reports, all the glowing reports from the cadets and officers on the _Enterprise_ , she seems good on paper, but we'd like to have your professional opinion of her."

Spock has not seen nor talked to Cadet Kirk in one month, three days, and 14.9 hours. He has only managed to catch glimpses of her, a flash of long golden hair perhaps, or from snippets of conversation between cadets. In the few days he had known her in person, she had inspired such deep emotional response in him on no less than two occasions, saved the planet, killed for her crew, and became more of a legend than she already was.

"She is a solely unique human, Admiral." Spock answers cooly. "Cadet Kirk has a great amount of potential, but is often held back because of her character defects. She is reckless and foolhardy, prone to being personally involved in conflicts and willing to do anything in a 'no-win scenario'."

"However," He continues after a pause. "In spite of recent traumas, she still diligently serves the community. As the brief captain of the Enterprise, she displayed remarkable resolve and brilliance. She is, as humans express, 'rough around the edges', but I believe that she can improve with time and experience and become a good captain."

"High praise from a Vulcan." Barnett says. "Do you agree with her assignment?"

Spock thinks about Kirk, the humanness of her emotions and how fast she was blazing through the academy. She had faced him down with a compelling argument during her trial.

"It is not an illogical decision." Is all he says.

"Would you look at that." Barnett chuckles and gestures for Spock to stand beside him in front of the window. He joins him and follows the admiral's gaze to the students crowding around a central figure, sitting on a bench.

With his superior vision, Spock could clearly make out a cadet with both hands writing something on two PADDs simultaneously before showing its contents to the cadets surrounding her- he had instinctively known that it was a woman. She was speaking, but from his vantage point, he could not see what she was saying.

The two stand there and Spock wonders if the rest of the meeting was going to be silent observation when after precisely 4.2 minutes, the blonde gets up from the bench, laughing all the way, waves her hand in farewell, before heading in the direction of the building Spock and Barnett were currently in.

As she gets closer, Spock recognised her as the cadet they had been discussing- James Kirk herself. Kirk walks with a spring in her step, stopping to exchange words with a group exiting the building.

"I think that was one of her tutoring sessions," Barnett explains as Kirk disappears from sight. "Her schedule's supposed to be clear for this period of time, but second-year astrophysics students always have a way of getting to her ahead of all the other departments."

"She has a meeting with Pike about now, he's going to give her one last assessment and we will issue her orders soon," Barnett says, with something of a smile on his face.

Spock gives him a firm nod. "I will withdraw all charges against the Cadet within the next three hours, Admiral, and you have my word that I support her appointment as Captain of the Enterprise."

* * *

She's done the right thing, and she wonders why the entire panel of admirals had summoned her before her graduation.

"We're giving you the _Enterprise_ ," Pike says with a smile, he's still in a wheelchair, poor bastard. Those slugs did a good one with his spine.

The expression on Jim's face is worth all the debates with Starfleet on how young she was to be assuming command, inexperienced as well. She's speechless, her blue eyes comically wide as she scans the lines of her assignment. _Command of the Enterprise upon graduation..._

Then she beams. It's one of those solar systems powering, hundred million watt smiles that light up a whole person's features. It's brilliant and exudes youth and optimism, something Starfleet was desperately in need of now that its cadet numbers had taken a huge dent.

"Oh my god!" Jim claps a hand onto her mouth, the smile not yet receding as the shock settles. "Are you guys serious?"

Admiral Barnett, who probably took offense at being called a 'guy', nods seriously. "After a lengthy consideration, Commander Spock has dropped his charges against you and you are officially going to report to the starship _Enterprise_ immediately after your graduation."

"You gave a convincing argument at your hearing, Kirk." Admiral Simons adds. He had been there at the _Roast of the Kobayashi Maru_ , as Jim had deemed it. "Even Commander Spock admits the logic of your words. You have grown well in the past months, graduating a demanding three-year course at the top of your class, and the majority of the admiralty support this."

"That's great. I-thank you." Jim finds her voice at last. "But why did you have to tell me in person? All of you probably have busier things to do, really."

"Cadet Kirk." It's Archer who speaks, Jim feels the need to stand at the sight of the legendary admiral. "You're about to become the youngest captain in Starfleet history, where's your confidence? I'm told you aren't usually like this."

" _Like what_?" Jim couldn't help but stare at the aging admiral from under her lashes with a come-hither gaze. Her voice drops to a low purr.

It stretches on for a few awkward seconds before Jim smiles brightly, ruining the effect. "Relax, sir. I'll do my best."

Archer was amused by this young woman, having only heard the rumors of her intelligence. He could see her father in her carefree grin, a bit of her mother too, with that hair. "I expect no less from a Kirk."

Jim tenses, like she always does at the mention of her last name. What usually followed was something about her father that she had probably heard before.

"You're destined for great things, Kirk." Archer's lips curl into a small smile as he signals his approval. The admirals clap politely, though the few opposed to her appointment merely nod at her. "Do the 'Fleet proud."

"Thank you, sir." Jim dips her head respectfully, internally she was dancing and yelling her head off. She couldn't wait to tell everyone.

"Dismissed."

* * *

She skips down the corridors, humming under her breath. Jim was going to be a captain, she was going off to see the stars!

The cadets do a double take as she passes them. _Was_ _that Jim Kirk? The same Jim Kirk who was solemn and dignified in her classes now, and less fun?_

In her head, Jim compiles a list of crew members. She instantly thinks of the men and women who were on the ship when they were battling Nero. She does a pirouette, landing delicately on her tiptoes.

She seeks out Sulu first. Jim had never noticed, but he was in the same tactics class as she was. They still meet up once a week for drinks.

"Hey!" She catches up to him after the lecture.

Recognition enters his eyes. "Jim."

"Sulu." A shy smile comes to her features. "How would you like to be helmsman of the _Enterprise_ after graduation?"

"Wait, what's going on?" _Was Kirk offering him a job? Since when?_

"I'm going to be captain." Jim feels a certain confirmation now that she's spoken those words out loud. "I get to choose some of the crew, and I think you'll be the best for the job."

"So, would you like to take it?" She says eagerly.

"Congratulations," Sulu says, gathering his thoughts. It was a generous offer and he finds it hard to say no to the person who had saved his life. Jim waits for his answer patiently. "Yes, the _Enterprise_ is my first choice, so of course I accept."

"Have you told anyone else?" He asks as Jim punches her fist in the air. _One down, five to go._

"No, I haven't." Jim beams. "Thanks, hon!"

* * *

Uhura's next.

Jim seeks her out after the X-ling club meeting. The dark-skinned woman knows the maniacal grin on the blonde's face meant no good whatsoever as she blocked her way to the door.

"Hey Nyota," Jim smirks, drawing out the syllables of her name. "Can I talk to you for a sec?"

"What do you want, Kirk?" She raises an eyebrow. Jim seemed to have gotten even cockier after saving the world.

"Nothing. Just wanted to offer you a job as the communications officer for the Enterprise."

Uhura scoffs. "Who died and made you captain?"

Jim's expression turns cold and her smile disappears. Uhura apologizes, wishing she could take back those words. "So you're going to be captain?"

"Yes, I am." Her voice is icy. "Are you going to take the job or not? If you don't, I still have thousands of people who would kill for a position on the Enterprise."

"I would, thank you." Uhura couldn't help but feel slightly jealous at how Kirk ( _Captain_ Kirk now) had accomplished what she could only do in ten years in three. "I had mentioned how I would like to serve on the ship after graduation."

"I read your report, Uhura." Her tone is crisp and biting. "I'll see you around."

"Of course." Uhura tilts her head. A tiny, blink-and-you'll-miss-it smile flits across Jim's face. It's not her usual cocky smirk. It looks more natural on her lips, it wasn't unpleasant. It suited her.

Jim walks off and Uhura is brought back to the time when she told Galia how she walked like she owned the whole place. After Nero, she'll never see her Orion roommate again and complain to her about Kirk like she used to. School seems so far away now.

Her eyes follow the retreating figure, steps slow, walking alone.

* * *

She finds Chekov in her advanced physics class, staring at his curly-haired head from her seat at the back.

"Chekov." Jim pulls him to the side when Professor Rumbin finishes his talk.

"Hello, Jim!" He perks up with a happy smile. Jim resists the urge to ruffle his hair, he was so puppy-like sometimes.

"Listen, Chekov, I was wondering if you'd like to come on board the Enterprise as a navigator."

"Navigator?" The Russian curls his 'v's when he was excited. Chekov beams as he deduces Jim's promotion. "You have been made keptin!"

He reaches over and embraces Jim, who's never one to shy away from body contact, grabs both his arms and steadies them both. Glad to see how somebody finally shared her elation.

"So, what do you think?" Jim grins toothily, letting go of the young man. "You're one of the best students this academy has ever seen, everyone wants you. But the _Enterprise_ is perfect for you."

"Of course, I will take it, Jim." Chekov gives her a thumbs-up. "Can I also call you Jim?"

"Just don't call me Jamie and we're okay, kid." Jim claps him on the shoulder and the sheer force of it makes him bend slightly.

"See you in the next class!" Chekov waves gaily before heading in the opposite direction.

* * *

Jim's not trying to fool herself. She's avoiding Bones and Spock when she comms Scotty. She's going to save the best for last. Or at least that was what she wanted to do, not that those two were both so unapproachable, especially Spock.

Mainly Spock. Bones was just going to tell her about how dark and dangerous space was.

"'Ello? Is it you Jim?" Scotty's comforting brogue comes across fuzzy from the location. He was in Aberdeen, visiting old friends.

"Yeah, how's it going, Scotty?"

"Very well. Have 'ad a few drinks since this mornin' and a sandwich." His voice is cheerful and if she was honest, his accent was slipping through.

"See, Mr. Scott, I've been assigned to be captain of the _Enterprise_ after I graduate. So, I was wondering if you'd like to be our resident chief engineer."

There is a pause at the other end. "Are you completely serious? This innae a joke, is it?"

"No. I would want to send you the formal letter, but I did want to inform you personally." Jim presses on. "I can't think of anyone else I want to take care of her, Scotty."

"Great. I'll take it." He raises his voice. "Guess who's going to space?"

"Keenser can come too." Jim had reassigned both of them to her ship.

"Thank you, lassie." She could hear the grin in his voice and then he disconnects with a hasty 'get down!', probably directed at someone in the pub he was in. "She's beaut' Jim, now you won't mind if I stop by to make some uh- upgrades first, d'ya know what I mean?"

"Sure thing, Scotty," Jim replies with a smile. Scotty whoops triumphantly and signs off.

Jim shakes her head and nibbles at her cinnamon roll, the cafeteria had run out of real cream and she was stuck with the synthetic sugary stuff that she hated.

 _At least she was stomaching her food._

* * *

Instead of telling Spock, she sends him a message, short, sweet and to the point. Jim couldn't imagine the _Enterprise_ without the Vulcan on board and also thanks him for lifting the charges.

She's a bit of a nervous spammer and keeps on sending the same message in various degrees of desperation until a little pop-up informs her that she had been blocked.

Jim was outraged. No one blocked James Tiberius Kirk. Sure, those messages might be annoying for someone who lived in meditative order, who was still in mourning, and his impression of her may be somewhat biased, but he didn't have to block her. This called for revenge.

"You can't force him, Jim," Pike tells her as she meets him in his office. "He'll join if he wants to."

"I can't think of anyone else I'd want as an XO, sir." She says truthfully. "Vulcans are hard to deal with, I can't seem to find him anywhere, all my messages are being ignored."

"Well, wait and see, Kirk." Pike shrugs. "The poor guy just lost his mother and his home planet, he needs the time."

"Sir, did he say why he dropped the charges against me when you met with him?" Jim presses.

"Barnett had a nice chat with him, from what he said," Pike says, his hands on his desk. "Barnett's a good judge of character so whatever Commander Spock said must've been persuasive enough for him to approve your appointment."

Jim purses her lips, whatever tells he sees on her face makes Pike frown and say. "I hear the combat classes you've been teaching are doing unprecedently well, your hand-to-hand combat skills are excellent, Jim. Makes me wonder what other things you've been hiding from us."

"I've kept up on my training, Pike," She says. "You know that."

"That I do, sooner or later you'll probably catch some admiral's attention if you haven't already," Pike leans back in his chair, eyeing her. He has always been something like a father figure for her, more than a mentor in many ways.

Jim tells him just that.

Pike reaches his hand over his desk and clasps hers affectionately. "You've made me proud."

She smiles, a small one, but a smile all the same.

"Don't expect me to sign the adoption papers anytime soon though, Jim." He quips and they both laugh.

* * *

"That could wait." She mutters to herself as she strums the strings of her violin, pretending she was playing the guitar.

Jim hefts her instrument onto her chin and starts to play an old love song. She hums and starts to sing quietly. " _Fly me to the moon._ "

Another chord. " _Let me play among the stars. Let me see what Spring is like on Jupiter and Mars._ "

The door to her room opens with a snick. The familiar steady tread of Bones reaching her ears. Ah, someone to serenade.

" _In other words, hold my hand._ " She turns her head to look at him from her chair. She reaches out with one hand, placing her violin on her chair. The doctor rolls his eyes and sits down. She continues a-Capella. " _In other words, baby, kiss me_."

"Keep on wishin', Jim." He grumbles.

Jim widens her eyes and sticks out her bottom lip. " _Fill my heart with song and let me sing forevermore._ "

"Don't give me that sad look, kid." Bones stands to make some coffee, even if a coffee this late would mean a sleepless night. He had to do something with his hands.

" _You are all I hope for, all I worship and adore_." Her voice is gentle, and her eyes were strangely hypnotizing.

"What's the special occasion, Jim?" He says.

She tells him, staring up at him imploringly with those big blues of hers. Bones could feel himself softening, he could be CMO. Even if space was disease and danger wrapped up in darkness and silence.

And Jim finishes, with a hopeful half-smile on her face, she's tapping her fingers against her dress like she did when she was nervous. And Bones could see himself, beside the blonde on the bridge, dealing with the vastness of the universe with her by his side.

She's waiting for an answer, biting her lip. He wasn't gonna throw away a chance like that. Bones could work in the _Enterprise_. He wouldn't like it, but he would do it.

Jim turns her face away for a moment to hide her relief at Bones' agreement. She then beams and jumps up to hug him, kissing both of his cheeks in excitement.

The doctor pretends he doesn't like all this mushy stuff and he really didn't like flying into space in an oversized trash can but he's happy when Jim's happy. They had both worked hard to get to where they had gotten to, Jim deserved it the most.

 _In other words, please be true._

 _In other words, I love you._

* * *

 _Left. Right. Straight ahead._

The cameras are obsessed with catching every angle of her profile for some reason and for her part, Jim makes sure they get a good look at her. More exposure meant more people seeing her and deciding to join the ranks.

She gives them a bright smile, canting her hip to the side. The flashes increase, and when she walks away from the press, there are dark spots flashing behind her eyes.

If it hadn't been the Enterprise's christening ceremony, she wouldn't even have attended this event. Jim would've stayed in her rented apartment, watching reruns of cheesy space operas and eating popcorn by the bowl.

There are small snacks being served that taste overspiced and are neutrally coloured. Jim grabs a few of them and stuffs them into her mouth, that would be her dinner for the night. Chekov and Sulu wave at her jauntily with some other ensigns, and she makes a note to remember all of their names.

Bones is there, looking dashing in a gray suit. Jim isn't too bad herself, in a rented blue dress that went with her eyes.

"Looking good, Doctor." Jim grins, winking at the pretty blonde on his arm. "Hey, Christine."

"Jim." Bones nods and knocks back a glass of champagne.

"Hello, _Captain_." Christine greets.

Jim feels a bit sad when she sees her, Christine had been assigned to the _Pegasus_ instead of the Enterprise, as head nurse. _You can't have everyone._

She wanted to stay for a proper conversation, but someone was calling her to join a plethora of admirals standing at the side of the room.

"I wish I could stay."

"It's your night, Jim." Bones waves at her with a shooing movement. "Don't let us old men stop you."

The blonde opens her mouth, wondering what was she going to say to that.

"Might as well continue my royal tradition of ignoring authority." She smirks. "So what's going on with you two?"

The unsaid implication makes Bones puff up and Christine avert her eyes, almost bashfully.

"It's ok if you don't want to talk about it." She says. "I don't judge."

At Bones' disbelieving look, she adds. "No more than usual."

"The woman of the hour." Christine chirps. "My mom told me to thank you."

"Tell Mrs. Chapel I said hi," Jim replies. "I'm happy to see that you both being excited about having nice assignments."

"Excited? Annoyed maybe." Bones huffs, but there is little sincerity in his voice. Jim likes to think he's just as excited as she was to be assigned to the _Enterprise_.

"You should stop frowning," Jim says. "Those lines are going to stay on your face forever."

They speak for a few minutes, she hopes she could avoid the other attendees until the end, but as fate would have it, they send a messenger.

"Admiral Pike." She gives him a mocking salute.

"Jim. Dr. McCoy." He nods, he's still shuffling with every small step. She tries not to look at the cane. "And who is this lovely lady?"

"Christine Chapel, sir. I'm a nurse."

"Good to have you here." His eyes crinkle as he smiles. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to steal her away for the rest of the night."

"Please don't." She sighs. "I'm happy here."

"They want to talk with you."

"Again?" Jim raises an eyebrow.

"You're very popular tonight." He gives her a tight smile. "Come along, Kirk."

She decided it was better to go along with him rather than stay behind. "I'm coming, Sir."

The admirals and her new peers are just as boring as she would've hoped.

"Are you sure that you don't need a someone to keep you steady, Kirk?" One of them says patronizingly, dropping her title. "Girls work better if they have a man at their side."

"No." She says sweetly with a smile she reserved for such occasions. "I'm an adult _woman_ perfectly capable of making my own decisions."

A few of them, commanders who were twice her age, are giving her backhanded compliments about her tired looks. And really, there were only so many discreet glares Jim could take before she excuses herself from the tight-knit group.

The blonde finds comfort in her fourth flute of champagne beside the buffet table and wishes there was stronger alcohol provided.

"Congratulations, Jim."

The blonde jumps a bit, her heartbeat speeding up. "Who?"

 _Who else but Mr. Spock himself?_ She turns to face the speaker. "Ambassador."

"It's nice to see you again, Captain Kirk."

"Oh please," Jim rolls her eyes. "Just call me Jim."

"You remind me so much of him." Old Spock (she had to stop calling him that, maybe the Other Spock- she'll work it out later) says softly.

He was different from her timeline, not as tough, wiser somewhat. His brown eyes were less stony and if Jim watched him closely, she could see something like a smile crinkling the corners.

"What was he like?" Of course, the alternate version of herself had to be a male. Jim just had the luck of being born in space, with her father dying believing she was a boy, and her mother leaving her with her stupid runaway brother.

The other Jim probably was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, his father alive and his family intact. With nobody doubting his ability- being a woman in a man's world generally sucked.

"To borrow a term from your culture, Jim was certainly a Casanova."

"And that was his one defining quality?" The blonde frowns slightly.

"That was who Jim Kirk was to the people, a lover, someone to be feared, as for his crew, he was someone many looked up to and Jim protected all of us. He had a way of, as humans say, 'getting under your skin'." Spock says, he had a strange tilt of his lips. _Was he smiling?_ "He _is_ a great man."

"Was he happy?"

Something flickers across Spock's weathered face, Jim is struck by how old he looked in that moment. Vulcans had a much longer lifespan than humans, and she wondered what he had seen in his years.

Spock hesitates in his response. "I cannot say he lived a happy life, but I have many fond memories of him being happy."

Jim thinks about it. It was a passable answer from a cryptic Vulcan. "That's nice."

"You must have met this world's Mr. Spock," Jim nods. "Go easy on him, Captain."

"Oh, I will." The blonde laughs, how was this Spock so friendly, while the other one spoke like he had something stuck up his ass all the time? She put it down to their respective age gap. Original Spock must have a few screws loose in his head. "Most of the time."

"High five?" She held up her hand with a wicked smile. Touching was viewed as an intimate gesture in Vulcan culture, but she couldn't resist.

For a moment there as Original Spock held up his own hand, she thought he actually would high-five her. Instead, he spreads his fingers into a Vulcan salute. "Live long and prosper."

"Of course." Jim drops the smile for a solemn look and pulled off a perfect ta'al. " _Dif-tor heh smusma._ "

* * *

"Engineering thrusters and impulse engines at your command, Sir."

"Weapons systems and chutes on standby."

"Dock control reports ready, Captain."

Jim strides onto the bridge in her brand new uniform, with her hair done in a braid that took her half an hour to finish properly. It feels like the first day of school all over again.

 _Captain_. The gravity of her role settles on her, Jim's responsible for the well being four hundred and twenty-seven members of her crew, she has many things to do, to prove, but first things first.

"Bones." Jim refrains herself from skipping over to the scowling CMO. She pinches both his cheeks like Mama McCoy always did. "Buckle up and get ready for the ride."

She sits down in the chair, feeling the smooth leather of the seat calms her immensely. "Scotty, how are we doing down there?"

"Dilithium chambers at maximum, Captain." There's a small pause. "Get down!"

Jim smiles softly and crosses her ankles. "Mister Sulu, prepare to engage thrusters."

Everyone turns to look at the person as the turbo lift doors open with its funny little noise. Jim's thrilled to see the half-Vulcan walk onto the bridge, with his hands held behind his back.

She offers him a brilliant smile and rises to her feet to greet him. Jim didn't think he would want to be on the _Enterprise_ after she had uttered the lowest of insults to him (for good reason, she tells herself) and sent a total of thirty-one messages to him about becoming her first officer.

"Permission to come aboard, Captain."

And there it was again, her title. Jim was going to have to get used to this formality, maybe she could get the crew to at least call her by her name in their free time.

"Permission granted."

"As you have yet to select a first officer, respectfully, I would like to submit my candidacy." He stands in front of her and stares down at Jim, Spock was really quite tall. She only reached the bottom of his chin, despite being one of the leggier girls at the academy. "Should you desire, I can provide character references."

 _That cheeky-_ Jim's stress tides now that she had assembled her dream crew. She chooses her next words with care.

 _Nothing too eager now._ She chides herself.

"It would be my honour, Commander, to accept your candidacy." Spock nods and swiftly walks to his station. Jim relaxes in the chair. "Manoeuvring thrusters, Mister Sulu."

"Thrusters on standby." He replies with the white flash of his grin.

"Take us out."

A year ago, if she had heard that the universe depended on her relationship with Bones, Jim would've laughed so hard she would've burst her spleen. And if someone told her that she would somehow be made the captain of the flagship, Jim wouldn't even laugh, she'd _sob_ because she really didn't expect this.

She stares at the expanse of space. It's silent, full of mystery and hidden secrets waiting to be uncovered.

Jim closes her eyes. It's further than her father had ever gone. She has her ship and her crew, everything was complete.

She lets the stars carry her away, and who knows where she might end up.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

 **Star Trek is not mine.**

 **So I skipped a few things (like the substantial plot of the movie) and Spock Prime fits in here somewhere. Jim's finally Captain of the Enterprise! Yay! And a lot of people forget that she's a genius so obviously I had to slip some references into that.**

 **Also, that part about Jim's skills catching the eye of 'some' admiral? Important later, maybe. She's ambidextrous here, by the way.**

 **Thanks for reading, favoring, following, and reviewing my story! Hope you like this chapter. :)**

 **(Revised 16/1/2018)**


	8. Loved the Stars Too Fondly

Chapter 7:

Loved the Stars Too Fondly

Jim's gonna take it too far one day.

After six months in the chair, her crew will never get used to the unpredictability and uncanny success of her actions. She's proven herself time and time again to be worthy of her promotion.

She's also nearly caused two entirely separate revolutions, stopped civil wars and turned down proposals from half a dozen heads of state. Jim's a walking scandal on some planets where the rulers were misogynistic conservatives who couldn't wrap their minds around a woman taking control. She doesn't need to be 'tamed' or 'dominated' by a man, she could take care of herself, thank you very much.

Her crew knows just how much she'll do for them. The captain is willing to be tortured, taken advantage of, and thrown into the path of danger to ensure the safety of her crew. Not that they'll ever let it happen again.

Bones patches her up after every scrap she gets through, wondering why was he stuck with such a self-sacrificing woman who just about managed to not die in all the situations she finds herself in.

He'll never admit it, but he's jealous of Jim's devil-may-care attitude sometimes. If he was a few years younger, he might've joined in on her little missions and dangerous lifestyle.

Currently they were due to dock on Earth for a charity ball tomorrow night, because no party was complete without the darling of Starfleet, the golden captain who was so reminiscent of her father, no matter how many times she said so otherwise. Jim herself called it a play on nostalgia, undermining her own achievements as though they didn't matter compared to those of her father.

"Hey, Sulu." Jim swivels her chair to meet the helmsman's eyes. "Wanna do something awesome?"

"As long as it's not against regs," He replies with a quick glance at Spock, who was dedicating his attention to his console. "I'm in."

"Bet you thirty credits you can't do three barrel rolls in a row." Jim grins, putting it in a way she knew Sulu couldn't resist. Uhura lets out a long suffering sigh, she should've known not to send away Dr. McCoy, who was commonly known to be eighty percent of Jim's impulse control. Spock only raises an eyebrow skeptically. It wasn't against the rules per se, though if there was even a scratch on the hull, there would be hell to pay.

"You're on." Sulu smirks, Chekov inhales slowly. This was going to be smooth.

"Sweet." Jim licks her lips and says to Uhura. "Lieutenant, open a ship-wide channel please."

"I hope you know what you're doing, Captain." She stares at Jim meaningfully before turning switches quickly, _best get this over with._

"Attention all crew members, this is your captain speaking. We'll be experiencing some heavy turbulence soon as I have just bet Mr. Sulu that he can't do three successive barrel rolls with the _Enterprise_ , so being the idiot that he is." Sulu scoffs mockingly at this. "He has accepted the challenge and with some luck, I'll be thirty credits richer. Please grab onto something and hold your breath. Kirk out."

"Are you actually going to do this, Hikaru?" Chekov asks carefully. "Ve may be questioned by Starfleet command."

"Nothing to worry about." Jim retorts, happily strapping herself into her chair. "Just quote protocol 610 back at them."

"Do you not mean protocol 613 section (b), Captain?" Spock corrects.

"I've only read the damn book once, Mr. Spock. And I know what I'm doing." Jim rolls her eyes. "I hope Sulu knows what he's doing."

"Yes I do, Captain." The man's face is twisted into a determined snarl as he takes executes the barrel rolls directly above Starfleet Headquarters like the badass he is.

Everyone on the ground below watches, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, as the gleaming ship with her hull proudly bearing its name of _U.S.S. Enterprise NC-1701_ so they wouldn't have any trouble identifying it, glides over the buildings, doing three full revolutions before sailing across the sea to the dock.

Jim whoops as her ship barely misses the top of that administrative tower. It's fun, like being on an fairground park ride. Her braided bun, thankfully, hasn't been mussed up by the barrel rolls. The rest of her crew as slightly out of breath, Spock and Uhura don't have a hair out of place, while Chekov is frantically trying to sweep his curls out of his face.

A moment after, Bones storms onto the bridge like a man on a mission, and starts to rant about how dangerous that stunt was, close to the point of tearing out his hair. "All because you wanted to show off!"

"To be fair, it was Sulu who did it." Jim raises her arms in a universal sign of surrender.

"Don't push me into this." The helmsman glares at the captain who winks playfully. "And for the record, she started it."

"I owe him thirty credits, _Bones_." She smiles, all gold and white teeth and rosy lips. It's unabashed and open. "What a coincidence that it's the same amount you owe me for getting Christine to date you."

"Don't look at me like that woman." The doctor grunts. "I'm immune to your so-called charms as they are."

"Fine." Jim pouts and turns back to the viewscreen, effectively ignoring her friend. "Initiate landing procedures, Mr. Sulu."

He looks at Spock, the pointy-eared elf was staring back at him impassively, clearly unshaken by what just happened.

Bones shakes his head and retreats to the medbay, muttering under his breath as he seemed to do a lot these days, about the audacity of some people.

* * *

Jim likes charity balls. There's free food and booze, all she needed to make herself at home.

She also had to find a date in under twenty hours starting after she would be debriefed by Pike in his office. Jim couldn't ask Bones, who was going with Christine Chapel. Chekov and Sulu would be going stag (the jury was still out on those two), Spock and Uhura had each other. Gary Mitchell had gone home to visit family. And as captain, it would be strange of her to be going out with her subordinates, maybe she should just go alone.

Then the news would be full of articles about how undesirable Jim was, even if she was only twenty six, they would compare her to a loveless hag. She was going to be scrutinised not just by the press, she would be analysed by her peers and the brass. That was why she had told Sulu to do three barrel rolls, she had to get her mind off this more pressing matter.

Jim couldn't pick up a date on the street, it had to be someone respectable but also fun.

She runs through the list of prospective dates she knew and decides to comm someone who was interested in her. Hopefully he'll be willing to part from his fields for a short while.

Jim's waiting in front of the building, her long coat protecting her from the chills. Maybe her message had been too late, he lived on the other side of the planet, she didn't want to go face the crowd on her own.

The rest of her crew had already entered, Jim, as always, would be one of the last guests to arrive, having opted to ride her sleek new motorcycle through the traffic.

A valet had taken over the motorcycle with an admiring look on his face. Then he recognises the woman in the black coat and salutes her.

Tommy rolls up to the steps in an honest to god, fuel-guzzling pick-up truck. A show of luxury, how well-to-do he had become since he published his paper on a crop that had an 85% turnover rate. Jim had read it, but deeper research on other planets would be needed in order for his proposition to succeed.

This Tommy was different from Tommy from the bar, or even the Tommy she had known back then. Dolled up and absolutely delicious in a tight-fitting midnight black suit.

"Jim." Tommy grins as he hugs her.

She hesitantly wraps her arms around him, _looks like someone had gone to therapy_. Jim still had some issues to sort out, as pointed out by Pike yesterday.

"Tommy." Jim's smile holds some degree of sadness. "It's been a long time."

"You kept tabs on me, on all of us." He shrugs expressively. "It's good to see you again."

Jim's eyes are unreadable. Out of the nine children she had saved, only four were still living, the rest had died in freak accidents.

"You're something of a big shot now." Tommy says. "A real captain now, youngest _ever_."

It's Jim's turn to shrug.

Tommy's face turns comically scared. "Am I late?"

"Nah." Jim takes him by the arm and leads him towards the steps in quick steps. "You're just in time."

* * *

"Nice dress." Tommy compliments as she steers them into the corridor. Someone takes their coats, Jim makes a point to thank the young woman as she scurries away.

"Thanks."

It was a nice dress, a bit more gaudy than what she would normally go for. If she had her way she would've worn black, but this gold gown was something cut was more modest than what she usually wore, but the glittering fabric clung to her curves like a glove and her matching golden heels made her feel invincible.

"I thought you would be used to this." Tommy could feel Jim trembling next to him.

"Just the cold." Jim says when she notices his concern.

"James T. Kirk, plus one." She places her paper invitation on the tray and they are both scanned and patted down for any weapons. Security was especially tight at these important events.

She goes into the large, mirrored hall. Heads turn to look at her, the men want her, the women are green with envy. Jim could feel their gazes burning into her back, she stuck out like a sore thumb in a sea of muted colours.

At least Tommy looked like he was enjoying the flashes of cameras and clamouring questions as much as she was, Jim hoped this hadn't ruined the night for him. She grabs two glasses of champagne from a server and hands him one.

Some security officers scatters the crowd of reporters and she quickly downs the champagne in one gulp, enjoying the bubbles and sweetness. The heavy stuff will come later in the evening.

"Hello." Jim says, tonight was all about mingling and making friends. She had no idea that she was talking to the rarely seen Vice President of the Federation. "I'm Captain James T. Kirk."

"I know who you are, my granddaughter has your action figure." The man says with a friendly gleam in his eyes, Jim doesn't like the action figure herself, it made her look pasty. "I'm Roberto Islava."

"It's a pleasure to meet you." A genuine smile comes onto her face. She knows the man, called the puppeteer by the press because of how he much he controlled the actual President behind the scenes. "This is Thomas Leighton."

"Sir." Tommy, who knew exactly who the Spaniard was, greets him respectfully with a slight inclination of his body.

"Captain." He offers her his arm gentlemanly. "Would you like to dance?"

The string quartet were already starting up a waltz. Jim really wanted to try some of the hors d'oeuvres before she began to dance but there was no harm in holding off her hunger for a while.

She glances at Tommy, who nods good-naturedly, alright with the fact that his date wouldn't be sharing the first dance with him. "Yes I would, Sir."

Jim is aware of just how good she looks as she gracefully steps across the floor. All her scars had been covered up with heavy foundation and her shoes were the right choice for dancing.

"You are a very good dancer, captain." The man says softly into her ear as he leans in closer.

"You have are good leader." Jim replies, liking the feeling of the gossamer fabric swishing across her legs. "You can call me Jim if you like."

"Of course, Jim."

The blonde grins shamelessly, and the dance goes on. Tommy shakes his head, Jim was being awfully intimate with the Vice President.

Then again, Jim demonstrates a strange degree of intimacy with whoever she dances, like she was sharing something with her partner that nobody else had ever touched.

That was part of what made her so popular everywhere, the kind of effortless charm and ability to make people flock to be in your presence was something the captain did not lack.

He watches, spellbound, as Jim twirls on the marble floor, a blur of golden hair and smiles as brilliant as the sun.

"Who are you?" Someone is speaking gruffly to his left, Tommy thought he recognized the man from the crew of the Enterprise.

"Thomas Leighton." He replies diplomatically. "And you?"

"Leonard McCoy." The man answers in kind. "That's Doctor McCoy to you kid."

"Medicine?"

"Yes." Dr. McCoy appraises him, Tommy keeps a stoic face on under the burning gaze. "CMO of the Enterprise."

"Jim's ship."

"Yes, _Captain Kirk's_ ship."

"You wrote the article on the relations between Vulcan and Human respiratory systems, didn't you?" Tommy knew he recognized him from somewhere. The southern accent was a tip off. "To prove that we share nearly identical DNA with Vulcans?"

"Not many people know that."

"It's an obscure read."

"Jim said it was too vague on the actual correlation between human and Vulcan respiratory systems. Too many established facts and too little research."

"Jim thinks everything is vague. It's as if she wants everything in the universe to explain itself to her."

"Or she seeks out the truth by herself."

Tommy shrugs. "I suppose."

"Whatchy'all talking about?" Jim says, looping her arm around Tommy's, breathless from dancing.

"Making introductions." Dr. McCoy replies.

"Can't believe I missed that." Jim has a hand on her hip. "Tommy's a childhood friend of mine."

"From your mysterious past?"

"It's not that mysterious." The blonde retorts, biting her lip. "I just don't like telling people about it."

Tommy wraps an arm around her waist supportively. That action does not go unnoticed.

"You two close?" He asks pointedly.

"We met again during the night before my first Kobayashi Maru test. He's kinda my good luck charm."

"It took you three tries and a controversial method for you to pass." Bones deadpans.

"Well dontcha rain on my parade, Bones. You're my extra special charm."

He stares at Jim's wide smile for a moment, then looks at Tommy, and throws his hands in the air. "I need a drink."

"My lady." Tommy begins in an overly dramatic way, offering his hand when Bones had walked away. "Would you finally allow me this dance?"

"After I catch my breath, honey." Jim says, motioning for a server to come by with more flutes of champagne.

Her voice was getting its slight twang from all the drinks she was consuming. Jim could hold her liquor but Tommy hoped she wouldn't get alcohol poisoning at the rate she was drinking.

"Come on."

It's a tango. Bones should've known Jim could dance, her movements had always been fluid, but almost nobody knew how to do the Spanish dance properly since the 22nd century.

The blonde lets her partner, who he understood was some sort of childhood friend from their closeness, lead her into the dance by the hand.

There were no more than four couples on the floor, most well-educated officials and one Jim Kirk.

Her hips swayed, prompting her partner, a handsome man with the nose and dreamy green eyes of an Old Hollywood star, to follow. Jim was no beginner at dancing, and she began to take control of the steps.

He begins to twirl and twist her around the room, the movements light and well-oiled, like they had been choreographed beforehand. Jim, who had been planning all evening to seduce her date, draws closer to him until his breath stirs her hair.

Her footwork was very good, and she wraps one heeled foot around Tommy's leg. He moves lower and pulls her up again slowly.

Bones snorts as the man spins Jim away the moment she tries to kiss him. The minute frown on her face was priceless. She had no need to do that in front of everyone, her date was already giving her bedroom eyes.

One of the girls accidentally brushes with her, bumping into her shoulder. Jim tries to catch her face, it was difficult to in the dim lighting. She just about managed to see her eyes, which were a sharp grey. She couldn't blame her, the dance was complicated.

"I had no idea you knew how to tango." Jim says.

"Neither did I." Tommy says in the same unaffected manner he answered all her questions with.

"What?"

"You're leading." He replies.

Jim had steered him into the dance, a smirk on her lips. He never missed a step or turned the wrong way, she kept him the way he needed to be. In return, his hands stayed politely at her waist all the way.

She keeps a steady grip on his arm and his polished shoes click as he turns her leisurely around. Jim goes entirely boneless at the end, held up only by Tommy's strong arms.

Sulu and Chekov, the closest to the couple, could hear the staccato cracks as Jim straightens with a bright smile.

"Oh, darling." Jim gushes.

"Nice dance." Tommy replies with a lazy grin.

"We should do this more often." She says as he wraps an arm around her slender waist.

The quartet is replaced by a band who play much more upbeat songs. Old Earth classics that Jim could recall from her youth.

The rest of the glittering crowd don't seem to enjoy the beats and overwhelming sounds, but Jim taps her feet while sipping her scotch neat.

Tommy's chatting with a biologist who was enamored with his work in the genetic food area. Jim doesn't mind, she has him eating out of the palm of her hand by now.

 _Nobody's dancing._ Jim could see the distressed looks of some of the aliens who weren't used to the classical music.

She beckons to Tommy, who comes over with the skinny bottle blonde clinging to him like a starving woman. Jim narrows her eyes and the other woman recognises her.

"Captain!" She grasps Jim's hands, shaking them madly. "I'm a huge fan. Thank you for what you did. Tommy here was just telling me-"

She sputters when she notices Jim's look and scampers away, latching on to someone else.

"I do believe you have a date, Thomas." Jim says sternly.

"She was kinda cute." He shrugs, he did like goading Jim. "Had eyes like warm honey."

"And what, my eyes aren't pretty too?" Jim leans towards the man, widening her eyes.

Tommy lifts up her chin to examine them. "They're stunning, Jim. As vivid as the Milky Way on a clear night out in the desert."

The woman sighs. You can tell a lot from a sigh, and Tommy sensed that Jim was sad.

"Like my father's."

"Perhaps." Tommy replies diplomatically, knowing that his date had unresolved daddy issues.

They sit in silence.

"I should go get Bones." Jim says quickly. "Maybe get him to dance for once. He's been frowning all evening."

"That might be the whiskey here. It's the mild stuff."

"He should relax. The food here is amazing." Jim pops a macaroon into her mouth and stands.

The sudden movement makes her head spin, she contributes it to the all the drinks she's had tonight. But when the spinning still hovers in her head, Jim starts to feel bad instinctively.

Her legs lose control, she's paralysed. Tommy catches her before she fell and starts to yell. Jim didn't understand a word, it was all gibberish to her.

White hot pain makes her close her eyes and the way her heart felt like it was being ripped out of her chest makes her whimper.

Bones appears in the her swimming vision, his concerned face slowly eaten up by black.

Jim tries to smile but nothing worked anymore. _What's happening to me?_

And soon she was unconscious.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

 **Star Trek is not mine.**

 **I personally feel that this chapter is not one of my best, blame me being an old romantic. I just really like the notion of a ball being held and everyone looking pretty. So Jim is struck by an unknown ailment (was she poisoned?) and now we'll just have to see what happens next.**


	9. To Be Fearful of the Night

Chapter 8:

To Be Fearful of the Night

 _Jim's fidgeting in her chair._

 _She's trying to find comfort in it, but she couldn't shake off the feeling that something bad was going to happen._

 _And it does. It's the Narada and her ship, the Enterprise, is on a course straight towards it._

 _She turns to yell at the crew to leave, but everyone has_ frozen _. Expressions of terror and resigned fear plastered on their faces._

 _Jim moves to change the course, to do anything. Her arms glued to the captain's chair, and she could do nothing but watch helplessly as her ship flies closer and closer-_

* * *

She wakes with a gasp. Bones didn't know how relieved he was to see those blue eyes wide open again.

Jim's happy to see her friend, dressed in his white doctor's garb, and opens her mouth to talk to him. Her heart rate spikes.

Then she immediately starts to seize.

He yells for the nurses to help him stabilise her because she could die, goddammit, and he didn't know the reason why.

No scanners could detect what was wrong with her body, what had made Jim collapse at the gala. She had looked so healthy, all lit up with a dazzling smile as her partner had spun her out on the floor, her dress and hair a whirl of gold.

Hell, he had even rustled up a practically ancient machine and hauled her through an archaic CT scan to confirm that he had no idea what was hurting her.

She pulls through by the skin of her teeth. Like she always does.

But then her condition slowly deteriorates.

Her crew watches from behind the glass windows as Jim struggles to breathe and drinks more water than her body could handle.

Tommy's especially worried. He's seen these symptoms before, on Tarsus IV, and the sickness had been incurable then. Maybe it would be alright here, with the advanced medicine of Starfleet, Jim could live. He clings to that hope because the other option would be her slow and uneasy death.

Bones issues a request to administration to declassify all of Jim's medical files- it's his fifth one of the year so far.

It's the twenty-third rejection since the first time he did it after that allergic reaction in their first year. The captain's medical file only contained her extensive list of allergies and was blank everywhere else.

He asks Pike, who shakes his head sadly and informs him that Jim herself had encrypted those files. It would be impossible to get past all those layers of security in time.

Jim acts like she isn't in pain when he's in the room, and she does a great job of pretending like she isn't dying a prolonged death. She's all smiles and off-color jokes no matter how much her voice rasps.

"You better tell me what's going on." He demands because Jim is smirking like she knows something he doesn't and that look is close to making him want to tear out his hair.

"It's nothing, Bones." Her chapped lips curl in the shadow of a smile. "It'll be over soon."

Jim raises her hand, for him to shake, or hold tightly, or simply to reach out for comfort? Bones will never know, because the blonde had still not been declared non-contagious.

"Whenever you're ready, Jim." Leonard says.

* * *

That's the first week.

The second week was the worst in Leonard's life.

Jim's delirious all the time she's awake, her lungs are failing, she couldn't stomach any solid food and had to be fed through a tube. Her thin body is hooked up to IVs and machines. They're keeping her alive, but he wonders if it was enough.

It's the murmurs that eat him up.

"Stop it, please. Don't do that to her." Jim twists her fists into the sheets even when she's in a heavily sedated sleep. "Stop it! Oh God, _please_."

He doesn't want to think about who was she begging to stop. The person seemed to change with the time she woke, in the night there was Frank, in the other times it was frenzied murmurs to a man that Bones didn't know.

Tommy comes nearly every day, sometimes with synthetic flowers and Jim's favourite chocolates in a paper bag. He sits by her side for an hour, reading from Homer's _Iliad_ and _2001: Space Odyssey._ Some of the classics she liked. He's torn between telling the good doctor about Tarsus and keeping his mouth shut.

"Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth." Tommy quotes from the tablet he was holding.

"That was Archimedes." Jim blows out a tired breath and coughs into a fist. "Cool guy."

"A genius. One of the great thinkers of the past. He's not exactly a _cool_ guy, he invented a death ray."

"Heat ray. Huge difference."

Jim makes an effort to talk to him, though her throat muscles are contracting and every word is painful. She needs Bones to give her three hypos before she could speak coherently.

"I'm sorry I have such shitty luck," Jim says hoarsely.

"You don't have to be." Tommy reaches out a hand to stroke her hair. _The girl with the golden hair, with a smile like no other._ "You're going to be fine."

"Don't lie to me, Thomas." Her eyes are like slips of flint. "I've seen these symptoms before. My chances aren't high."

"Dr. McCoy doing everything he can."

"That's what he always does." Jim sighs, a sigh that Tommy would label as pride and fondness for her friend.

"I'll be fine." It's Jim's turn to comfort him after he looks away to fumble with the lilies in the glass vase. She's grinning, though the smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. "I'm always fine."

* * *

She's comatose the next day, her chest rising slowly. Bones could see her tiring, the fight was leaving her body. Jim's been through a lot these past weeks and it was time for her to rest.

He's not about to stand for it though and gets her prepped for exploratory surgery.

The symptoms could be coming from the blockage in her spinal tract, but it was too hard to tell from the scans. And her blood sugar was dangerously low, which made him all the more worried because blockage in spines and blood sugar levels at the same time did not make any sense.

Bones checks her spine first, there are small scratches on the bone. Feeling slightly sick, he knocks his hand lightly against the bone. It had nearly been hollowed out.

He finds nothing promising inside her body, but there had to be something inside it that explained the consumption of Jim's bone marrow. Bones stares down at his friend, small and deathly pale. Sucking the marrow out of life, he thought morbidly as he closes her up carefully.

Jim is moved aboard the Enterprise, into the medbay. He has high hopes that the change in scenery would help with her condition. Tommy, the captain's beau, leaves the ship with his head bowed.

He feels for the kid, Bones had no idea if she would live to see him again. That's what he's scared of the most- Jim dying.

* * *

It's been two days. The possibility of Jim's death settles onto the ship like a dark cloud.

Every day she struggles to breathe, her face twisted in pain even when in a coma.

Jim's pulse lingers dangerously low and Bones finally lets the anxious crew in to pay their respects.

The youngest crew in the fleet mourn their young captain. She is only twenty-five and swallowed by blankets and fluffed pillows, she looks smaller, vulnerable somehow.

They've learnt a lot about her in the past six months. And the fact that she wasn't going out with a bang disturbed them. Jim had no odds for survival, even the bridge crew had given up hope for her, but wasn't that what she did? _Didn't she beat the odds all the time?_

* * *

And she does.

Bones rushes into the room, expecting the worse when Jim flatlines.

Jim had ripped the tubes out, her arms were bleeding, her hair was dishevelled, but her eyes hadn't looked so clear since she swore she would beat the Kobayashi Maru.

She meets his gaze and then vomits blood over the side of her bed. He leans her back and places a hand on her forehead, she was burning up with a fever.

Something shiny catches his eye, glittering on the white tiles.

It's a bug the size of his thumb, gorged on blood. Jim's blood.

He'll never feel the same sort of satisfaction as he squashes the bug under the heel of his boot.

Bones doesn't spend a second more contemplating what species was this parasite ( _he should've seen the symptoms early on_ ) and focuses on getting Jim well again.

Spock analyzes the bug mush in the labs personally later on and comes up with an illogical result.

It was a species native to a colony on Tarsus IV, no one had set foot on the planet for decades after the massacre of the four thousand. Spock found himself at a loss to explain how did a parasite from the unpopulated planet found its way into Jim's bloodstream.

This was why the scanners had missed it, it had been mutated to remain invisible in a human body. Some sort of old technology with a twist.

How the captain managed to find herself in these situations was beyond him, and he did not believe in pure bad luck or coincidence.

Jim's eyes are blank when he tells her, and he keeps searching for some emotion behind those blue irises. Bones couldn't find her reaction, having known her for three years and nearing four, he still couldn't read Jim Kirk when she shuts herself off.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" He asks.

"Trust me," Jim says, her voice flat. "It's nothing you want to hear."

* * *

"It's a parasite." She tells Tommy as soon as she leaves the medbay, holding up a sample of bug mush. "From Tarsus. My body managed to reject it, thanks to all those meds I was on in my coma."

There is a twitch of his eyebrow, a minimal reaction to outsiders, but an all too telling one to Jim. He was unsettled as well.

"Do you think…"

Jim knows exactly what he was thinking, and no, she could not worry about something that might as well a bad joke on her by fate.

But she has always suspected, even after all these years that there was the slightest chance that _he_ had survived. _His_ body was never found.

"Maybe." She says grudgingly, closing her eyes. "Just the smallest possibility."

"Nothing is purely coincidental, Jim," Tommy says. "That parasite was on a planet no sane person has set foot on in years, how could it have gotten to you? Only a handful of people know that you are a Tarsus survivor."

Jim sighs, running a hand through her hair. "At least after all these years, I finally have a clue on what killed my kids back then. A stupid bug."

"Smith would've freaked if he had known," Tommy says after a moment. "He spent a lot of time trying to remember what those symptoms could've been when Waters had died. He came really close, do you remember?"

An image of Waters breathing his last breaths comes to mind, surrounded by children who had already seen so much death. None of them had looked away, not even little Kevin.

"All too well."

* * *

She schedules a video conference with Chris after talking with Tommy.

"Hey, Kirk." Pike greets her with a small smile when she calls him. "How was the bedrest?"

"Boring." She replies with a shrug. "It's good to be back, Sir."

"It's good to see you alive, Jim," Pike says. "You had me worried when you dropped into a coma."

"Back still hurting?"

"Like hell," Pike says wryly. "Now enough small talk- what's this I hear of a Tarsus parasite sucking the life outta you?"

"Not dead yet." She answers. "And I had Commander Spock send the bug samples to Starfleet HQ for further analysis. In short, we don't know who the hell did this, Pike."

"Hmm," He hums. "How's Spock doing?"

Jim thinks of the Vulcan with his expressive eyebrows, bowl cut, and general air of disapproval. And his dedication to his post. Maybe that was what Uhura liked about him.

"He's doing great," Jim says honestly. "The Enterprise does well under his command."

"And the crew?"

"They're awesome, it's been six months and they've been bonding, getting closer," Jim says, and beams. She knew all of their names by heart now.

"Have you increased security?"

Now, she rolls her eyes. "There's really no need, although Spock has doubled patrols between shifts. That parasite was an isolated case, Pike, it just happened to me."

"Do you have any clue as to why you alone were singled out? Hit by something from Tarsus?"

"If you think it's because of my past, then you're wrong, it can't be him," Jim says, trying to convince him as much as herself. "Makes no sense for him to target me now, instead of a decade earlier when I was nothing."

"So you think it is Kodos?" Pike inquires with a steely look.

Jim frowns slightly. "I'm still not sure, but if I get to the bottom of this shit then you'll be the first to know."

"Language, Jim," Pike says, almost fatherly in his exasperation. "And be careful, this attacker might be someone from inside the 'Fleet, so trust no one."

"Yessir." Jim promises.

* * *

She's back in the chair in record time. Jim has always healed quickly and this was no exception.

The blonde is gaunter and walks with a limp for a while- she refuses to use the Starfleet-issued cane and hobbles everywhere with a silver-tipped walking stick that Sulu got her as a joke.

Jim sits down and purses her lips. _When did the chair become so lumpy and uncomfortable?_ She shifts and crosses her legs.

"Are you alright, Captain?" Sulu asks her after hearing her move for the hundredth time in her seat.

"I'm fine. Must be a crick in my back." Jim offers him a curt smile and stands. She then stretches and collapses into her chair, sprawling into it.

It's the beginning of the infamous Kirk-sprawl- a position especially common when she took the redeye shift. She's all limbs in her chair.

Jim doesn't mind what they think of her, what the admirals say with their looks when they see her bad posture. Her skin was thick enough to withstand a nuclear blast and she was fine.

"Fine my ass." Bones mutters as he fixes her spine after Jim comes to him complaining about what should've been a sore back.

She finds herself in the same cot in the medbay, thinking about how a parasite from Tarsus IV could've gotten under her skin, refusing to think about Kodos. Jim's thoughts wander back to the grey-eyed woman who had bumped into her.

She couldn't shake off the feeling that there was something about the woman that unnerved her. And Jim's instincts were almost always correct.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **You know I have no idea which way this story is going (still don't) but thank you for reading this far and for all the reviews, follows and favourites. I hope you like this chapter, maybe Jim'll tell Bones about Tarsus soon. Stay tuned.**

 **(Revised 29/1/2018)**


	10. A Beautiful Lie

Chapter 8:

A Beautiful Lie

Len has always known that Jim had her secrets. That was part of her mystery, though to outsiders the blonde seemed to wear her heart on her sleeve and her face an open book.

Jim went down deeper than that. Everything about her person was layered. She kept everything locked away, behind a mask that sank into her skin like ink. It had taken a full semester to get her to confide in him, and even then he wondered if she was telling the truth.

You couldn't tell with Jim, the woman who told lies as easy as breathing.

Like now, with her hair as bright as gold and a fond smile was she stares at him while munching on an apple, she seemed to be fine. Better than fine even, Jim had the glow of a woman in love.

"Is there something on my face?" Jim asks.

"Don't talk while you're eating."

"Yes, Mommy Bones." She rolls her eyes, swallowing a bite of apple.

"Do you ever think about what you would do if you weren't captain of the Enterprise?"

It wasn't a personal question. Len had asked it a thousand times, only in different ways.

Jim huffs and quickly devours the rest of her apple before answering. _He already knows what she'll say, so why bother asking again? Something had to be wrong.  
_  
"Well, I'll still be going from planet to planet, maybe get arrested a few times, just living I guess." Jim shrugs. "I won't even want to join Starfleet."

Len understands. Captaining the Enterprise is Jim's first, best destiny.

Jim starts on a cheeseburger, it's one of her guilty pleasure foods that didn't cause an allergic reaction. Len swears if not for all the running around she does on missions, she would've have gained ten pounds by the end of the year.

"You should have a salad." Len gestures to his own lunch.

"I'm not a rabbit. I don't do salad." Jim retorts.

Catching Len's dark look, she scoffs. "Like you don't want to have a cheeseburger once in awhile, Bones."

"You eat one every chance you get, kid. They're gonna kill you one day."

Jim polishes off her cheeseburger, she's always been a quick eater and never leaves anything behind. "You do know that the medbay stocks cholesterol-dissolving hypos, right?"

"That you're allergic to?"

"Still, it's better than that replicated stuff you're having." Jim pokes his salad with a finger. "Fake vegetables, it's even worse than the things they have at the academy cafeteria."

"Don't get me started." Len twists his mouth into a scowl. Jim grins. This was how they had bonded, bitching about bad food and sadistic professors.

"It's hard getting used to a monogamous relationship."

"When you've slept with every alien under the sun maybe." Len says.

They are familiar with the sounds of comfortable talking and laughs in the cafeteria and lets it fill the silence between them.

And Jim wasn't avoiding him when she slips off to her quarters to call Tommy. She really wasn't.

* * *

Jim looks at the sketch. The eyes were amazingly detailed and the lashes luscious, but there was no emotion behind them. It was like looking at a flat surface, nothing like Bones' hazel or Tommy's chartreuse.

And they were grey, which made matters even worse, because grey was the hardest colour to put life in. It was just so grey.

There were no other features, just those feminine eyes staring up from the paper of Jim's sketchbook.

She couldn't possibly go through the database with those eyes alone. Jim wouldn't be able to find a match.

She goes through the security videos, looking for a trail. It was difficult, she didn't have any memory of what the woman had been wearing, or what colour her hair was. Just those grey, colourless eyes.

Jim hadn't told Bones about her suspicions yet.

So she calls Tommy. He's working on a starbase above the planet Q. Jim has no idea why they would name a planet with a single letter, it was just so drab. It reminded her of the long running James Bond comedies. Of course, she's in no position to complain, she once named a goldfish Whiskers.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"Tommy, I have a question."

Her boyfriend smiles, Jim was very cute when she frowned. "What do you need?"

"Do you remember anything about the woman I bumped into when we were tangoing?"

"There were her eyes." Tommy recalls the shade of grey, so pale it made her irises seem white. "And there was something on her hand."

Jim presses on. "What did it look like?"

"I don't really remember what but her dress was purple." Tommy explains. "It wasn't like yours, it had a lot of swirls."

Her blue eyes light up, she could trace all guests that wore purple that night. That should be easier.

"Thanks."

"So, how's it going on the Enterprise?"

Jim beams with pride as she tells Tommy of all the things she had done on the ship since her recovery. Missions and pranks on Spock.

"He's so rigid sometimes, Captain this and Captain that. It's like he has a permanent stick up his ass."

"Commander Spock is a Vulcan and your XO. He's supposed to be serious."

"The only emotion I've got out of him so far is the 'fascinating' he said when he showed me TUS-577."

"The new breed of parasite they found in you."

"It wasn't exactly new, I prefer to think of it as an extension of something we already know."

"Aren't you the least bit curious about it?"

"I'm looking into it." Jim replies crisply.

"Have you tried telling anyone else?"

"I don't need anyone else. I'm telling you, aren't I?"

There is a period of silence, where Jim averts her gaze to stare at the statement painting of a blue stripe on her wall.

"Admiral Komack says I shouldn't be so reckless, but what does he know?"

"Well, he has one more medal of honour than you do."

Jim rolls her eyes, she seemed to be doing it a lot lately. "I'm not that reckless. He thinks I'll drive the Enterprise into a nebula and endanger my crew. I don't. Bad things just tend to happen to me."

"Bad luck, Jimmy." Tommy chuckles. "You've got luck, but it takes more than that to be a captain."

"You sound like Pike. He's always telling me to get myself together." Jim snorts. "I've got my whole life running smoothly."

"Smooth as silk." Tommy agrees. "You've got a chip on your shoulder, sweetheart."

That's what he always calls her. Sweetheart. And Jim likes it, those little things that show his affection. Bones called her darling and she always called everyone honey. It just slips off her tongue.

"Tell me something I don't know."

"I'm in love with you." He says with all seriousness.

Jim certainly didn't know that. She thought love would come along after getting together, but they hadn't even had sex yet and Tommy loved her.

She finds something to say. "I guess I like you too."

He sighs. Jim's still not willing to open up. "Take your time."

* * *

"Bones?" Jim enters the medbay, a troubled look on her face.

"Is something wrong?" He immediately leads her into his office after noting the gleam in her eyes.

She sits down. "What do you say when someone tells you he loves you?"

That moment had reminded her strongly of Galia, back at the academy, when the Orion girl told her she loved her. Jim had clammed up and she has regretted it ever since.

The doctor crosses his arms and lets out a world weary sigh. "Did Tommy say that?"

Jim nods.

"Well what did you say, Jim?"

Jim buries her head in her hands. "I said that I liked him. God, I'm a disaster."

Bones had seen Jim flirt before and she wasn't a disaster at relationships. Keeping relationships maybe, but this was Jim. Sex goddess and the prettiest girl on the ship. She probably wasn't used to it.

"Well do you feel anything for him?"

"Yes." Her voice is strained. "I mean, he's my boyfriend so I have to at least feel something for him, but what we have is-"

That narrows it down to commitment problems. Bones knew exactly how to advise her.

"-something you want to keep, but you don't know how to tell him you don't want to go too fast." He finishes.

Jim nods gratefully. "Relationships are something to be savoured, I don't want to jump straight to love after one month."

"If he loves you, or at least he says he does, he's telling the truth. I know Leighton, Jim, he's decent."

"I know." Now, Jim looks close to tearing her hair out in frustration.

"Have you seen each other since the parasite incident?"

"No."

"Have you been on a proper date before? And no, that ball and the visits don't count."

"No."

"Then you should schedule shore leave at Cygnia Minor."

"To get him to come to me?" Jim scoffs.

"Or you could go to him."

She shakes her head, and starts to twirl her cane around. It's becoming a habit for her, especially after she had worn out its use. "That would be a real disaster, Bones. I never ask men out, it's too blah."

"You've no trouble getting men into bed. There is something to do before that, which is called a date."

"I pick up strangers at bars so they don't count. That's foreplay. But this is Tommy." Jim says. "And I want something more."

"Do something romantic. You'll figure it out, being a genius and all." Bones says curtly. Sometimes Jim was as thick as the entire works of Dickens in big print. "Now get out, I have some more important things to do."

"More important than my relationship woes?"

"Dying people." Bones shoves her out of the medbay. "Have a higher priority in the sickbay."

"There's only Hullett from engineering with a sprained ankle." Jim points to the grimacing young man. "He's being treated by Christine, apparently it's non-threatening."

"Don't you have a ship to captain?" Bones snips, grabbing her cane. "And you don't need this anymore."

Jim acquiesces and turns her pleading blue eyes onto his. "I really need your advice. I've never done this before."

"Look, kid. You've hidden your emotions long enough, and he says he loves you already. You just have to answer."

"I love you too." Jim says quickly and inhales deeply. "Did that sound alright?"

It could've been slower and she could make it sound more genuine. Jim was nervous and it's the first time since Bones had seen her worked up over a relationship.

She tries again and a look of total adoration comes onto her face. "I love you too."

"I love you. Oh, I love you! I love you so much honey-" She grabs Bones' arm and stares up at him with those glittering eyes. Had they ever looked so blue before? "It makes my fingers hurt."

She's a good actress, that's for sure. Jim nimbly steps away from him after that moment.

Bones shrugs and crosses his arms, trying to school his face into a neutral expression "You'll be fine with that."

Jim leaves without another word. Just a lascivious wink at Hullett and Chapel. She'll talk to him later.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Very very quick update. If you didn't know, the beautiful lie is the one Jim's going to tell to Tommy that she loves him, but she doesn't (?). I'm building up tension (if not, I think I'm building up _something_.) I don't know and I'm the author.**

 **Anyway, thanks for reading and please leave a review so I can improve on this story. I really need new ways to describe Jim's eyes.;)**


	11. The Painful Truth

**Chapter 10**

 **The Painful Truth**

* * *

A few days after speaking with Tommy, Jim immediately says yes to the offer of transporting a council member from Tellar Prime to Cgynia Minor for a conference.

The Tellarite council member and his posse were nice enough. It was the band of stowaways who caused an entire system shutdown and tried to kill the council member as well as bomb his planet, a goal which was not exactly out of reach, as they did cause an entire system shut down on her ship.

Jim had some idea how the stowaways had gotten on unseen by looking at their little steel bands, she assumes it is some sort of advanced cloaking device, making them undetectable from the ship's sensors.

"Is it some fashion trend?" She says to nobody in particular, holding up the wrist of an unconscious stowaway. "How did they get their hands on this sort of tech?"

The lithe metal band has a small light that blinks red when Jim takes it off and puts it in the pocket of her skirt for Scotty to check out later.

"I hypothesize that they are not working alone, Captain," Spock notes. Her first officer is bleeding green from a cut on his forehead that he got during a scuffle earlier. Jim herself is sporting a growing bruise on her left cheek. "I will also mention the need for further investigation in my mission report."

She finds the rest of them and shuts them in her ship's brig as they make their way back to Tellar Prime.

"We are cleared to dock at Bay 21, Captain." Uhura informs her. "The prisoners will be transferred to local authorities after landing. Starfleet also requests your presence at Tellar Headquarters at eighteen-hundred hours tomorrow."

"Thank you, Uhura," Jim says, and turns in her chair to share an incredulous look with Spock. Well, she was shocked. Her XO simply conveyed his puzzlement with a raised eyebrow.

This incident was under scrutiny because the people at Starfleet thought the cause was her negligence. Jim didn't know why, they were safe with minimal casualties from her crew, she hadn't gone against any regulations she knew of when dealing with the intruders, and the stowaways' equipment was nothing they had ever seen before.

So, Jim's grounded. Yes, she could take a shuttle to Planet Q, but she wasn't going to be seen on the Enterprise any time soon.

Bones expresses his sympathies. Starfleet really was just looking for an excuse to scare Jim, who refused to follow instructions and leapt into hostile situations with her heart rather than her head sometimes. Such were the problems of being an ambitious women.

"It's a case of bad luck," He reasons as they disembark, dressed in civilian clothing. "And you're lucky you weren't arrested."

"For what? At least the councilman's safe. The unknown equipment should've been a suitable excuse for me to be unsuspended," Jim says. "And I don't blame luck, I blame Murphy's Law."

"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong?" A wry smile twists Bones's mouth. "You shot the councilman in the leg, dammit."

"It does happen." She keeps a grin on her face, though he could sense her anger. "There's no telling how long I'll be grounded. This is bad, Bones."

A year ago, Jim would have said something like _to hell with consequences_ , but now she was responsible for herself, of course the crew and her ship came first.

"Jim, no need to get yourself in a twist. You did the right thing."

"Ideally, do not harm." She quips bitterly.

"I did not know you were familiar with the teachings of Surak, Captain." Spock steps into the conversation seamlessly, still wearing his uniform. He must have overheard it with his Vulcan hearing.

"Just the one." Jim says. "And there's a lot of things you don't know about me."

"I assure you that the crew respects your personal privacy, and that we express our condolences for what had happened. You are an adequate captain and I will endeavor to lead in your stead."

"That's sweet of you to say so, Commander," Jim smiles crookedly, tucking her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket. "But I'm not being left behind that easily."

"I speak as a colleague." His face was devoid of any human expression, but Jim could see some sort of softness in his eyes. "I sincerely wish that you will continue your time on the Enterprise as captain."

She shrugs. "Well, I did shoot someone important in the leg deliberately, so we'll see about that."

Spock tilts his head and says nothing. They walk to the arrival hall of the building with little conversation. Jim's thinking about her actions, now that was going to be bought up by her peers when she faced a review.

She checks her PADD for shuttle times to Cygnia Minor while she strolls away from Bones and Spock. _There was one two days later, she should probably take that one, it was before she went back to Earth for a review-_

Jim's interrupted by a tap on her back. Senses alert, she instantly reacts. Grabbing the man's arm, she flips him over with ease in a textbook judo throw.

Tommy stares up at her, his hair mussed and a dazed look in his bright green eyes.

"Sorry!" Jim finds herself flustered, her cheeks burning. She was amazed how _happy_ she felt when she sees him in person, for the first time in two months. He must've came all the way to see her. "Are you alright?"

"Nothing hurt but my bruised ego. I'll live." He remarks dryly, propping himself up with one arm.

The blonde helps him up. "Don't sneak up on me."

"It was supposed to be a surprise."

"Well you certainly surprised me," She giggles. Bones could hear the sound from where he was- Jim never giggled. "You came all the way here to have a date."

"And you threw me over your shoulder." He holds out a bunch of slightly squashed blue flowers tied with a silver ribbon.

"They're beautiful." Jim beams and takes the flowers from him. "I bought you flowers."

"It's a variation of a flower that my botanist friend discovered on Q. I tweaked its genes t a little to make them the colour of your eyes." He says proudly. "Kirk blue."

Jim sniffs a delicate flower. They smelled faintly like roses but had sharp-edged petals and a golden core.

"Thank you."

She kisses him. It's their first real kiss. Jim could feel something, like something expanding in her chest, just waiting to burst free. And her nose itched.

Jim couldn't take it after ten seconds- Tommy was a passionate kisser, and just drags a moment on for so long- she tears their lips apart to sneeze.

"Are you okay?"

"Just the pollen." Jim sneezes again. She has a funny sneeze, soft and a slightly wheezy.

"Are you allergic to the flowers?" Tommy takes the flowers away from her weak grip.

"No."

And then she goes off into a sneezing fit, her nose red.

"Maybe, but it's fine. The flowers are great."

Jim rubs her eyes and sneezes again.

"I'm fine."

"No, you're clearly not." Bones appears next to her with a hypo in hand. He turns to Tommy. "She's allergic to the pollen, this should give her some time."

"Some time before what? Is she going to be alright?"

"Ouch! Bones!" She hisses in pain. "I should've known you carried those torture devices everywhere."

"I'll get those." He whisks those flowers away and leaves a hypo in Tommy's hand. "She's also allergic to the medication, but that's the best I can do. You take care of her."

"Those flowers actually last a long time, they don't really need water. But what they need are some vitamin supplements." Tommy smiles sheepishly and waves Bones away. "Thank you, Doctor."

"'M fine." She murmurs, her throat was all clogged up. "Don't need another one."

"You're cute." Tommy deadpans and stabs the hypo into her neck.

"I feel much better." Jim says brightly after a few minutes of sitting down. "All ready to go."

"Do you want to see the famous moons of Tellar Prime at the planetary observatory?" He links his arm with hers. "Or go to the market for the famous sweet dough balls?"

"You choose." Jim wipes tears from her eyes, which were still a bit puffy after the allergic reaction. Her head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. "Sorry about the flowers. They really were a lovely shade of blue."

"Nah, it's fine. I'll give you chocolates next time." He grins. "And there's only one shade of blue that I care about today."

Jim couldn't help but smile. Tommy was just so unlike the people she used to go on dates with. She sniffs again, at least her nose wasn't running.

"I think I love you." Jim says, with a hint of hesitance, but she got it out. _Yes, I do._ She reassures herself.

* * *

Bones looks down at the flowers he was holding, the colour really was close to the shade of Jim's eyes. He snorts, the poor kid must've been shaken up that she had such a bad reaction to the pollen.

And they were quite pretty. Awfully sweet-smelling and the vivid blue petals were spread in an attractive way. He presses down on one and it refuses to bend, it felt like he was touching a sheet of reinforced platinum.

He doesn't know what to do with them, it seemed too crass to throw something so beautiful away.

So he goes to a rundown bar in the centre of town with Christine and Dr. Grant, gets himself drunk and hands out those flowers.

He knows he'll never see them again and he doesn't want to see that stark reminder of Jim. Christine takes one, with a knowing smirk, and he gives the rest to the ladies- which were loose terms to give to them.

And his thoughts drift back to his little girl, he should get something for her. They were returning to Earth in a month or so and Joanna always looked forward for her daddy's gifts.

Jim had good taste. She picked out a bag of candies that changed colour with your mood at Betazid and a blue stuffed whale. Joanna was interested in animals and the extinct species was a nice touch. His daughter loved her gifts.

He smiles to himself fondly and thinks about Jim as he slumps over the table with an empty glass in his hand.

"Hey stranger." A slender figure slides into the booth, bumping her shoulder to his.

"Jim?" He raises his head. _Speak of the devil._

"The one and only." She quips, looking fresh despite the late hour.

Bones groans and drops his head into his hands.

"Don't you want to know how I found you?" Jim asks wryly.

Bones grimaces into his hands. A horrifying thought of trackers implanted into his skin pops into his head.

She presses on. "How drunk are you?"

He doesn't respond.

"Sober enough to ignore me, I see."

Out of the corner of his eye, Bones could see the slight lines on her forehead. The lights of the bar bounce off her glasses, hiding her eyes. He could tell she thinking about something.

She tugs on his sleeve. "I have something I need to tell you."

* * *

 **Author's note:**

 **Star Trek doesn't belong to me.**

 **This is not the best way to end a chapter, but I can't think of any other ending to this. Jim finally opens up to Bones (more coming soon). Tommy is my choice for a love interest, someone I think Jim would like. He's seen the worse side of her (having been present during the Tarsus IV massacre) and he cares a lot about her. Will he be the one for Jim? Wait and see.**

 **Anyway, thank you for reading, reviewing and following this story! :)**

 **Updated 7/31/2018. Day ?: I don't know how to write romantic stuff.**


	12. Onwards We March

**Chapter 10**

 **Onwards We March**

* * *

He wakes up in one of those generic Starfleet-owned Institute rooms, to the sound of classical music being blasted from the conn system at the loudest it can get.

 _I can't stand it, I know you planned it._

He rolls over in the bed, and slams the dry pillow onto his head, trying to drown out the noise. This action only makes his head hurt worse. The lumpy mattress does nothing to help sooth the strange, uncomfortable aches in his body.

He closes his eyes, head pounding. His stomach feels like it was trying to swing dance at twice the speed. Leonard wonders how much he drank last night.

 _Oh my God, it's a mirage._

That unnatural wailing had to be Jim singing, Leonard curses those 'Fleet cheapskates for not investing in soundproof rooms. Or thicker walls.

There is a loud thud and a clang, then the guttural sounds of Klingon swears rise above the music before it begins again.

 _But yo I'm out and I'm gone._

"Hey, Bones!" Jim's voice rings crystal clear in his sensitive ears. "You still alive?"

He tries to remember what he did last night. Leonard drank a lot, there was light, there were flowers and Christine-

Jim had been there. Somehow he could dimly recall the brief moment when she had slid into the booth opposite to his and met his eyes desperately, but not the entire conversation he had had with Joanna yesterday.

So he gets out of bed and walks face first into a wall.

 _You're scheming on a thing that's a mirage._

"Here," Something is thrust onto his nose crookedly. "The climate here is wild, it's like five in the morning and already the sun's shining like it's noon."

He blearily sees her wearing what looked like sunglasses and sensed her staring at him.

"I made you breakfast," Jim pulls him to his feet and grabs her slightly crumpled uniform jacket. He tries to form words, but his brain feels like it had short-circuited. His friend was being so _loud_. "Would love to stay and watch you struggle, but duty calls."

 _Listen all of y'all it's a sabotage._

* * *

So she tells Bones about Tarsus IV.

Jim leaves Tommy at the Observatory with a kiss and promise of a third date, and finds Bones in a dive bar after asking Christine twice.

He's drunk off his ass, despite his Southern liver. A bad time, she knows but Jim doesn't know if she'll ever get another time again. She checks to see if anyone was listening, there is no one in the bar but a hooded figure on a stool, chatting with the bartender.

She lowers her voice.

"So, when I was young, there was this thing that happened." Not the best start, but things rarely started good for Jim.

"It was a massacre, genocide, murder on such a large scale that some idiots doubt it ever happened. There were so many horrifying things that I saw." Jim takes a deep breath. "And I survived that."

"It happened when I was fourteen. And I wasn't even the youngest one, who was just _six_. I still remember seeing them." The images flash in front of her eyes. "My kids."

He barely seems to comprehend her until her voice cracks when she was describing how she watched Thea being raped over and over again. "I couldn't even save her, I wasn't'- I just wasn't strong enough."

Bones grabs her hand, taking her by surprise, and squeezes it. "You're not weak, Jim."

She stays silent. He looks at her, eyes clear, the same way he always does, slightly exasperated. "Can I get you a drink?"

"Nah, I'm fine." She throws on a smile. "Got an early meeting tomorrow."

* * *

She's not called back to Earth. Apparently her God and saviour and long-suffering mentor Pike had pulled some strings and Starfleet had only given her a slap on the wrist.

And she was required to go to the HQ on this planet. She could live through a thorough chewing out.

Leaving Bones hungover was not one of her finest moments, but it was a necessity. Jim's job was on the line here.

She's shown into a small, empty conference room by a plain-faced attendant.

Jim doesn't flinch when a loud screeching sound fills the air as a message flares to life on the screen. The connection must be a bit wonky.

It's an admiral. Not one she knew. A small, dignified-looking man sitting behind a desk. He managed to make himself look larger than he was, which immediately sent Jim on edge. This was a dangerous man.

"Good morning, Captain." Jim didn't feel anywhere good listening to that crisp voice. "I can see that you've had a comfortable night of rest."

She bristles at that dig at her appearance. Sure, she wasn't exactly looking like a model but there was no need to mention it. Jim had a bad night. There was some things makeup couldn't cover up.

"Yes, I did." She says stiffly.

"Did you mean to shoot the ambassador in the leg?"

Ah, an interrogation.

"No. It was an of-the-moment decision to save my crew." Jim adds as an afterthought. "Sir."

"Normally I wouldn't risk your temperament, or your record of insubordination, but you have the sort of finesse that we want for doing a job."

"What _do_ you want?" Jim was feeling prickly, and ditches the 'sir'.

"My name is Admiral William Hunter." He leans over his desk, a predatory gleam in his eyes. "Have you heard of Section 31?"

* * *

"Jim." Bones greets as she enters the medbay for pre-flight checks, which was mostly an excuse to go see her friend.

"Bones, old buddy." She says brightly, gesturing at her surroundings. "Look at me, here of my own free will."

"What are you doing here?"

"I have some checks to do." She shows him her PADD, which he takes. "You've been requesting to double the medical supplies this month."

"You and the kids are probably going to get into some sort of trouble soon, I can feel a chill in my bones."

"Aw, Bones, you know I don't like it when it isn't me making bone-related puns."

He's frowning. "What happened that night?"

"Which night?" She answers quickly with a question. "There are so many."

"The one where I got drunk."

"Narrows it down to five hundred," Jim says, sitting down on a cot. "And I'm counting our first meeting."

Even though she wasn't looking at him, Jim could see Bones' face. Forehead creased, pursed lips, typical expression of Leonard McCoy in deep thought.

"I don't remember." He says finally, holding his PADD with white knuckles. "Did you tell me something?"

"I tell you lots of things when you're drunk." Jim grins crookedly. "Just because you always forget them afterwards."

"That was once."

"You forgot who I was and tried to chase me out of the dorm- which we shared- while hungover," She snorts. "I don't take things like that lightly."

"Whatever you said to me," He looks at her, scanning her face. "Will you tell me again?"

Jim presses her lips tightly together. _She always picked the wrong time, didn't she?_

"Someday, maybe." She replied, standing up. "When I remember to."

* * *

She learns to hate Hunter, him and his stupid gang of agents.

Jim may have no hope left for the integrity of the admiralty before, but now she had lost the last shred of hope she didn't even know had existed.

The blonde passes all the requirements, Jim was good at tests. She goes to a few classes to catch up. Section 31 doesn't do slow teaching, all the instructors were hard asses and expected you to keep up.

She's given her first mission when the Enterprise docks for a month of maintenance. It's a risky one. She has three weeks to take down a crime syndicate off planet with her team.

She vanishes from public eye for two weeks and resurfaces on Risa, the planet she used to love hiking on, bloodied and her hair cut to her shoulders sloppily. There was no time to mourn the loss- she did have pretty hair- because the team leader, Alpha, had shoved her directly into a large pit to fight two rather large aliens.

Jim had learnt pit fighting years ago, the gladiatorial style of it never impressed her. But she knows the struggle of a fight and plays on the offense instead of defense, like she would in chess.

A broken arm, sprained ankle and a concussion that was 'minor' according to Alpha, they were in.

Gamma, whom she suspects might have been the attendant to have shown her in to that first meeting with Hunter, suggests taking down the leader and Jim, a.k.a. Delta, has to spend what was supposed to be a relaxing three days on Earth tracking down the elusive chief of Amonaki.

They finish the mission in two week and two days, ahead of schedule. Beta, a surly, dark-skinned man, fires the killing shot. To Jim's understanding, he had been something of an assassin before joining Section 31. She doesn't ask, the blonde would like to be back on her ship and sipping a cup of coffee.

She hated coffee, but it was better than the nutrition drinks that were packed in silver bags for the mission.

Jim's back on Earth just two days before they would be leaving. She messages Tommy, and finds a way to smile at Bones' picture of Joanna holding the box of sweets and a shell necklace Jim had picked out for her.

"How are you feeling, Delta?" Alpha smirks as he escorts her out of the London base.

"Never better." Jim grinds out.

"Did you know that we're directly above a Kelvin memorial? Small world, eh?" He slaps her on the back and pressed down on her head as she enters a shuttle.

Jim feels a tiny spot of anger starting to grow in her chest and stomps on it. _Must not punch arrogant asshole.  
_  
"See ya." Alpha gives her a sloppy two-fingered salute.

Jim shows him only one of hers.

She hates it. She hates all of it.

* * *

Jim cuts her hair into a choppy bob. She thinks it looks good on her, it makes her look older and rougher, and she had gained cheekbones. (She also thinks that it makes her look like Winona. Just a bit.)

The Enterprise is given a milk run to Nibiru, and if anyone saw her bruises and cuts, they didn't say it out loud.

Bones has a concerned look on his face as he appraises Jim, she had a glint in her blue eyes and was favouring her right leg slightly. But she could be as stoic as Spock when she wants to be.

She wants him to speak to her, ask how she was doing, but he doesn't. Bones was quiet all the way on the shuttle to her ship.

"Are you okay, Captain?" Chekov asks. He's the only one who does. Jim has the same sort of protectiveness for the Russian ensign as she would have to a younger sibling.

"Never better, Chekov." And she smiles, it's not up to her usual standard, but it's good enough for the young man who grins brightly and turns back to his console.

Turns out life was never simple for James T. Kirk. All her life, she couldn't have a moment of peace.

"Is that red dot what I think it is?" Jim asks, pointing her finger at something flashing on the screen. "Preliminary checks said the planet was safe."

"That does not look safe." Jim sighs after a moment. "It looks a lot like a volcano."

"Captain." Spock interjects. "The natives are not advanced enough to understand the severity of a volcanic eruption."

"It's definitely an active volcano."

"Captain." He repeats. "We are here to study and record the life of Niburu, we must not interfere with the primitive population in any way that would be against the Prime Directive."

"Well, once the volcano erupts there won't be any life to study or record," Jim says, her voice dangerously close to sounding like a snap. "Who knows if this 'primitive population' will one day do great things? I want to see them survive."

Spocks stares at her. She stares back unwaveringly.

He blinks slowly.

"Captain."

"Commander."

"Captain."

"Commander."

" _Captain_."

"Mr. Spock." She says sternly. "Your point?"

If a Vulcan could show an emotion like annoyance, it would be seen in the quirk of Spock's eyebrow then.

"I refuse to violate one of Starfleet's founding laws."

"Good thing you aren't the captain then," Jim smiles wryly. "Look, I appreciate your concern, but you do not control what I do. Trust my judgement, Mr. Spock. Let's go, Sulu."

Spock returns to his seat rigidly, and Jim could feel his eyes burning into her back.

"Slow and steady." The Enterprise was manoeuvred delicately into the sea, or what Jim could only call a sea. She crosses her fingers, hoping no one had saw their descent. "That's it, Mr Sulu."

The man exhales deeply after the Enterprise is safely hidden beneath the waves. After all, the Prime Directive was at stake here.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

 **Star Trek really really doesn't belong to me.**

 **I would like to thank everyone who has read this story, there is more to come. Bones forgetting what Jim told him, Jim working in Section 31, and Into Darkness!**

 **Jim's new haircut is a homage to a Chris Pine's haircut of goodness (except just a bit longer past her ears), like the one he has in the Wonder Woman, a.k.a. what saved 2017.**

 **(Updated 25/8/2018. I have A-levels in less than 2 months. What am I doing here?)**


	13. Into Darkness

**Chapter 11**

 **Into Darkness**

 _"A brave captain is as a root, out of which, as branches, the courage of his soldiers doth spring."_

 _Sir Philip Sidney_

* * *

 _And who better to break the most important rule of all than Jim Kirk?_

She knows this was bad. Everything that had been pounded into her during her academy days was: _Breaking the Prime Directive is bad._

She didn't mean to, but people can't help what they see. And she thought she would get out of this mess. Jim didn't account for the Spock factor, the Vulcan seemed to have good intentions but he just couldn't keep his mouth shut.

And he waits for her after Pike tells her she won't be captain of the Enterprise anymore. The Vulcan was just looming outside the door like a stoic rain cloud.

"For once in your life, Spock." She closes her eyes as she struggles to find something to say. There was a sudden need to _hurt_ something. Her voice grows slightly louder "Couldn't you just keep your mouth shut and nod along?"

He doesn't say anything and continues to stare at her unnervingly. _Vulcans_.

"I have nothing to say to you." Jim says, her mouth drawn into a line.

She walks away.

* * *

Later, she blames herself for not telling the Vulcan that it was fine to lie sometimes. It was what made you mysterious, he wouldn't even be lying, just hiding the truth away for a long time.

"You shouldn't have done that." Tommy says as she talks to him in a private room after calming down, the connection surprisingly strong for a Starfleet facility. "It was incredibly stupid of you."

"I know." She could at least admit that to him. "But if Spock hadn't-"

"He was doing his duty. At least he told the truth."

"What and I didn't? I'm demoted. Right now there's rock bottom, about fifty feet of crap, and then there's me."

"Listen, sweetheart, you're lucky to have a job. Look at the bright side of things, at least you're still working."

"I feel terrible, but I couldn't just leave them to die in a volcanic eruption. That would be horrible, I hate the rules."

"Sometimes rules are there for a reason."

"Sometimes we have to break them for a good cause."

"Rules aren't meant to be broken."

Jim rolls her eyes. "Do we really need to get into this?"

Tommy opens his mouth but she beats him to it.

"Pinatas." Jim counts with her left hand. "Eggs."

"I get-"

She doesn't stop. "The glass cases of old library fire alarms. Your thumbs when you're stuck in cuffs."

"Alright, I get it."

Jim laughs bitterly. "They could've died."

"And you saved them. They now worship your ship, our technology. After this, there has to be a consequence. Be grateful that it wasn't a suspension."

"I suppose you're right, you're always right." Jim was too tired to argue with him.

"You've got Pike on your side."

Jim nods, she hadn't even properly thanked him for pulling some strings. "I guess he's on my side."

There's a loud noise at the other end. Tommy glances at the corner of his quarters. "I gotta go, Jim. Sounds like another explosion, some idiots are trying to experiment with the vegetation again."

"Remind me what you guys are doing over there again?"

Tommy's gaze grows distant, as though recalling memories. Then, he laughs softly. "Sometimes I wonder that myself."

"Talk to you soon."

"Love you."

"Love you too." Jim smiles and the connection is switched off.

The smile instantly falls off her face, the blonde rubs her temples. She needed a drink.

* * *

She nearly scoffs when Marcus said that Section 31 was a data archive. She hoped Alpha was alright, she'd met him once, hated him all the time she met him, but still.

Jim's curious about this John Harrison fellow, he couldn't have been more than thirty years old but his eyes were different. Even in the blue-lit projection could she see the sternness behind them, this man had the eyes of a soldier.

 _And the cheekbones of a 21st-century movie star_ , her libido notes.

Pike was staring at her, Jim raises her left eyebrow, a trick she learned from Spock. He was concerned, she concluded from the tightening of his mouth.

"Are you feeling alright?"

"I'm fine, Sir." Jim gives him a tentative smile and glances back to Marcus.

"Do you have something to add, Kirk?"

Jim, who is staring at the photo of Harrison, wondering what kind of man he was, a soldier definitely, but whose orders was he following?

"Isn't it odd that he just happened to attack a library?" Jim asks.

Just when she thought John Harrison couldn't be that bad, he attacks the conference room. Jim's too late to stop him from getting away.

Pike doesn't die but he's left in a coma with a limited chance of waking up. She watches paramedics carry him away on a stretcher from the ruins of the previously sleek conference room.

Jim's sympathy for John Harrison flickers and dies just like that. She pulls herself together and gets clearance from Marcus to bring him down.

* * *

She hates him and she doesn't.

"Are you alright?" Uhura asks her just before they board the ship to Kronos. The blonde was pale and her hair, usually in a ponytail now that it had grown past her shoulders, was tangled in some parts.

Jim forces a smile and replies. "Of course, Lieutenant."

The officer gives her a look that said she did not agree with Jim on that but she'll let it pass for once. After all, they had work to do.

Khan, a name that reminded Jim of the wild kings of old, was one of the most despicable men she had ever met, not the most despicable but close.

"I can't believe I bruised my knuckles on him," Jim examines her hands on the ship, adrenaline still running through her veins. Khan wasn't talking, instead, he was looking at her with deep eyes.

The blonde had experience looking for a sliver of emotion in cold eyes, like Spock's, but she avoided his gaze. It made her feel unclean for the rest of the journey.

"I hope you and Spock work out. He does like you, I'm sure. You two make a cute couple," Jim says as they disembark. Khan is taken away, she should follow the guards. "And if you ever need anything, Uhura-"

Uhura purses her lips tightly at her. "We'll be fine, Captain."

"Captain?" Spock says. Jim thinks she detects a question in his voice.

"I'm coming." She calls and flashes a bright smile at Uhura. "Tell me how it goes."

* * *

And he had a reason for his madness, which made things worse.

Jim could not harden her heart, she finds herself softening. He did what he did for his crew, she could empathize.

She knows that she could sacrifice herself for her men and women with no doubts whatsoever.

"Be careful, Jim." Bones warns his friend as she leaves the medbay to go back to the bridge. He had heard about men like Khan against women like Jim, this couldn't end well at all. "He won't surrender for no reason, he's gotta have some tricks up his sleeves."

She looks at him as though she wasn't really seeing him and absentmindedly replied. "Yeah, you too, Bones."

* * *

"Captain." The man doesn't turn to face her. Jim steels herself. "Why aren't we moving?"

"Beg your pardon?" Jim says, whatever she expected would be his opening move, talking about their flight status was not it.

Spock gives her a look. Jim grimaces at him, she was not in good shape, mentally and physically.

"Oh, you mean why did we stop?" She says softly, assessing the slender man. "I have a theory that it's Section 31 and something to do with Admiral Marcus."

"Captain," Spock warns. "A highly illogical conclusion."

Bones moves to the forcefield and makes a small opening. "Put your arm through the hole. I'm going take a blood sample."

"Isn't anyone interested to hear about my conspiracy theory at all?" Jim says, trying to keep the tone light.

"An unexpected malfunction in your warp core, at the edge of Klingon space, perhaps your theory isn't too far from the truth." Harrison murmurs silkily.

"How do you know that?" Bones demands, withdrawing his needle.

"Not now, Bones." She glances at him warningly. He leaves with a frown on his face.

"Listen, Harrison, I don't know what you have against Marcus, but I don't like him because he's an asshole." Jim hisses. "But do you know who's an even bigger asshole? You-"

"Captain." Spock's voice is louder this time. "I believe he is only trying to manipulate you. I would recommend not further engaging the prisoner."

"Of course, Commander." Jim nods. "But just give me a minute with him alone."

He raises an eyebrow, which could mean anything, but leaves all the same.

"They are special aren't they, your men?" Harrison purrs. "The moon and the stars, waiting every day for the sun to shine upon them."

"Is that a metaphor?" Jim snaps, she didn't like those. "And you keep quiet. I've watched you kill innocent men and women with families. You're a criminal! You're even worse than a murderer, and I was authorised to _end_ you. I'm not going to, but if you keep on talking like that I might as well throw you off the ship."

"I suppose you have a lot of experiences with murder, don't you, Captain Kirk?" His eyes glitter menacingly. "A little incident that you keep locked away inside, just waiting to be released. Some things may be better left buried but this is a secret that _is_ going to come back."

Jim's hands curve into fists by themselves and he notices.

"What will you do? Punch me over and over again until your arm weakens?" He looks at her hands. "Clearly you want to, and what will that achieve?"

"The past is dead, it died with him," She says sharply. "And you couldn't have known that."

"You do not believe." Harrison sneers, Jim's knees feel weak. "If you think that I am on par with a man like the Governor, then why do you not kill me?"

"Don't test me." Jim grits her teeth, ignoring the sinking feeling in her heart. _How did he know?_ "You have no idea of what I am capable of."

"You are only human, Captain, as am I." He steps closer to the edge of his cell, staring directly into her eyes. "Do you want to know why I surrendered?"

"I made a mistake."

Khan smiles, all teeth and jagged edges. "Women like you do not simply make _a_ mistake. You seem to have a conscience, which leads you to make a lot of mistakes, but without it, it would be impossible for me to convince you of the truth. 23-14-46-11. If you want to know why I did it, go and take a look."

Jim has a feeling that he had a point, and leaves, her feet moving on autopilot.

* * *

It could've gone better.

Jim tries so hard to keep her eyes open as she inhales with some difficulty. She had read about the effects of radiation on the human body and she knew she didn't have much time.

"Spock." She says shakily. "How's our ship?"

"Out of danger." Jim turns to see him better, her eyesight was getting worse but she could just about identify those bangs she had wanted to rip out a few hours ago. She still did, only with less intensity, her XO had no style at all. "You saved the crew."

"You used what he wanted against him." She smiles, her muscles aching. She feels hot and cold all over. Her body tissues were deteriorating, Jim resigns herself that she was going to leave this world. "That's a nice move."

"It is what you would have done."

"I suppose." Jim shrugs modestly, trying to keep a light air. "This is what you would have done too."

"It was only logical." She couldn't resist the subtle dig.

She gasps for breath. Her hands were numb. "I'm scared, Spock."

That was the truth. Jim had never been more frightened of something, because she will lose everything she had ever worked for in death.

Funny how she had imagined dying for so long on Tarsus, always alone in that cell until she rotted away.

Things almost never happened the way she thought they would, but at least Spock was here. There was some comfort to be found in the Vulcan being present for her last moments.

"As am I." He says, his voice wavering. Jim's hearing, dulled by the radiation, couldn't detect the slight change.

"Oh, there are so many things I want to do." Jim laughs tiredly and tries to push herself up into a proper sitting position. "Oh God, Spock. How do you choose not to feel?"

"I do not know." If the blonde's vision wasn't fading, she would've seen Spock shed a tear. "Right now I am failing."

"I want you-" Jim rasps, searching for the words. She couldn't be speechless now, not when now counted the most. "I want you to know why I couldn't let you die."

"Because you are my friend." Jim coughs and parts her lips into a final smile. Her against the world, as it would've been.

"KHAN!" Spock cries, his hands curling into fists helplessly as his captain's life leaves her body.

There would be hell to pay.

* * *

 _He has to save her._

He has to.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Star Trek is owned by people richer than me.**

 **Kind of departs from the actual Into Darkness script but I think this filler chapter was alright. I always thought that Pike didn't really have to die in the movie.**

 **Thanks for reading this far. Thanks for reviewing and favouriting and following my story! Cookies for everyone! Hope you liked it :)**

 **(Updated: 28/7/2018- yeah I'm gonna be one of those writers who add a quote to the beginning of each chapter that probably relates to it. maybe.)**


	14. Tomorrow Is Not Promised

**Chapter 14**

 **Tomorrow Is Not Promised**

Jim's not awake yet.

Len had been worried when her body had rejected the blood transfusion and had been frustrated to the point of cursing the ears off the attending nurse when she rejected the medication for the rejection.

 _Classic Jim._ He thinks to himself comfortingly as he looks at the stats on his PADD, _she's still functioning_ , but inside he was bracing for another seizure.

A man comes to visit, two days after Jim's transferral to the hospital, holding a box of chocolates.

Len almost wants to laugh. "She's not gonna get up and talk to you, but you're welcome to look at her, kid."

Tommy comes into the room, still clutching to the chocolates like a lifeline. Len recognises the brand as one of Jim's favourites.

He doesn't say anything about it though, and Jim's friend stands there like a statue. Len shoos him out of the room out of pity and takes the chocolates with him.

It was hard to see Kirk, once again the savior of a couple thousand of lives, tiny and frail in the hospital bed.

* * *

The attending physician, Dr. Clarke, confronts him one day with a steely look in her eyes.

"You must stop this, Dr. McCoy, or I have to report you to the board for violating the Hippocratic Oath."

He knows what he's doing goes against every ethic he's ever been taught in med school. _Above all, I must not play at God._

"Your answer, Doctor?" Clarke's voice brings him out of his thoughts.

"I will do everything in my power to save the patient." He says, looking at Jim's chest rise and fall gently with every breath.

"You do realise that you could lose your license for this, right?" Clarke says. "You'll have to go up to the board for this, Doctor, is this person really worth it?"

Something in him hardens. He looks at Clarke, standing primly in crisp white, and at his friend, small and frail in the cot. He couldn't let her stop him now, not when she was nearly there. "Dammit, Jim."

"What was that?"

"She is."

Clarke appraises him with cool eyes. "We have the authority to stop this right now."

"Do you?" Leonard says sharply back. "I'll get back to the board later."

"This is not a matter I can give you time to consider, Doctor McCoy." Clarke sighs as she follows his gaze. "Given your unusual attachment to the patient, I cannot let you continue."

He doesn't listen. Jim's done her part to the point where she sacrificed herself for countless men and women, and now it was time for her to regain her strength. There was only one Jim Kirk in this world, the bravest and most foolhardy person he knows. Leonard'll be damned if he lets her die like this.

Dr. Clarke leaves, but not without a last meaningful look at him.

* * *

Her condition improves at a tortoise's pace, but he's patient.

He watches her chest rise and fall with her every breath. _At least she was breathing._

"Admiral Archer to see Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy." A nurse informs him.

"I thought we were clear that no visitors meant no visitors." He grumbles, checking Jim's vitals.

"His rank overrides your request." The nurse explains and scurries out at Len's glare.

The living legend, along with Komack and Spock, stares down at the blonde, whose pallor was a worrying shade of yellow. They both have the same looks on their faces, the kind that has seen death and would see it again in this young woman.

Archer quickly pins a medal to Jim's hospital gown without ceremony.

"You better help her, Dr. McCoy." Archer says gruffly. "Kirk is who we need if we're to get through this century in one piece."

"Chris'll be proud of her," Komack says, hand on Jim's shoulder, eyes portraying a deep sympathy and sadness. "She's come a long way."

Spock, in one of his rare moments of empathy, stays behind and offers words of comfort.

"Jim has a tendency to put the lives of others before herself. And Starfleet thanks her for that. I am grateful that she still lives."

Len wants to snort or cry or both. _Grateful indeed._ He had heard from Uhura how the Vulcan had lost his control and nearly broke a superhuman in his fury. He had no idea the hobgoblin had it in him.

Of course Jim could make the green-blooded alien do that.

When she finally opens her ridiculously blue eyes, he can feel his shoulders relax a fraction and his pulse speed up.

* * *

 _Finally_.

Jim has a confused look on her face. The last thing she could think of was going into the engine room aboard the Enterprise to realign the warp core and what happened after was fuzzy. _She couldn't have survived the radiation in the engine room, what had happened?_

She waits until her vision stopped flickering and turns her head to the side. It was Bones.

He could see her eyes calculating and trying to piece together how she had woken up, as she blinks twice to adjust to the bright light.

He decides on what to say, how lonely he had been? How frustrated? How angry that Jim Kirk was a reckless woman who goes off to save the day and when she's barely clinging to life, leaves him to save herself?

"Don't be so melodramatic, you were _barely_ dead." He says, hovering near her with a scanner.

She smiles. She'd thought she'd see Bones when she woke up, looking like an angel dressed in white.

They fall back into the familiar lines of their bantering. Jim had missed this.

She's missed a lot. Pike's still in a goddamn coma and a third of Starfleet's staff are dead and her heart felt like it was barely able to pump blood, but Bones was her one constant.

Spock is flustered in his own Vulcan way as he speaks to her.

"You saved my life, Captain. And the lives of-"

"That's enough, Spock." Jim smiles fondly, her blue eyes regaining some of their old fire. "Just..."

She sighs deeply. "Thank you."

"You are welcome, Jim." It's the first time he's called her by her first name without her nagging.

"It was strange how you were the last thing I saw," Jim says, spoiling the moment. "Did we talk about anything important? Any last wishes I shared?"

"I recall you stating that the reason you came back for me on the volcano was that we are friends."

"Friends, huh?" Jim blinks, slightly impressed with her ability to express sentiments while dying. "Not bad at all."

"How did you get the blood?"

If Jim could put Spock's omniscient expression into words, she would say he looked slightly uncomfortable.

"I had to subdue Khan, with force."

"Basically you kicked his ass," Jim says wryly after a moment of finding her voice again and coughs.

Bones hands her a cup of water, which she sips gratefully.

"You know there were like fifty-two other pods on the ship, right?" Jim points out after two cups of water. "You could've gotten blood from any one of them."

Her best friend shrugs wordlessly.

"I guess this kills two birds with one stone." The blonde says and understands in that moment that he must've broken his oath to help her. "Thank you, Bones, for this."

He gives her this look. Jim could interpret it well, she's been living with him for three years after all. That half-exasperated, bittersweet twist of his mouth, a knowing gleam in his eyes. "Three years and finally she cracks."

Jim laughs tiredly and closes her eyes. She could hear Bones saying. "I'm going to give you a sedative, there's still a while to go before you can recover."

And she sleeps.

* * *

When she opens them again, she immediately notices Tommy slumped in a chair beside her cot.

She wants to speak, but she couldn't move her vocal chords. There was a fuzzy feeling in the back of her throat, Jim wanted some water.

Her eyes trace out every line of his frame. The way the sunlight touched his brown hair and made it glow bronze. The way his mouth relaxed in sleep. Jim decides she likes it if only the circumstances were a bit different.

Tommy stirs. Jim had read somewhere once that it was natural for a human to feel someone staring at them.

"Mornin' handsome," Jim says softly, her voice husky from sleep.

"Mornin' yourself." He stretches and yawns. "Need some water?"

"Yes, thank you." She says, wondering if waking up with her mouth as dry as a bone would become normal. Tommy pours the water into a glass cup and pulls a chair over to sit by her side.

He carefully lifts the cup of water to her lips and she drinks greedily. She had no idea how long she had been asleep for, nor does she want to find out.

"What's going on with you?" Jim asks out of curiosity.

"Watching my amazing girlfriend save the world and nearly kill herself in the process, business as usual." Tommy grins and kisses her forehead. "And you did die."

"Don't ruin it." Jim closes her eyes at the brief contact. "I missed you."

"Me too, sweetheart." Tommy places the cup on the bedside table. "How you've been?"

"Saving the world, _actually_ dying in the process, life as usual." Jim quips with a half-smile.

"You were reckless." Tommy's face turns from joking to serious. "What if Dr. McCoy wasn't able to save you in time?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Tommy." Jim sighs, sitting up on the bed with some effort. "Yes, I admit I was reckless, but lives were at risk, you can't just expect me to ignore the fact that my ship was going to crash."

"You need to start thinking for yourself, Jim."

"I am, Tommy. But sometimes the only noble desire is the desire to serve others."

"I'm not like Commander Spock, Jim, you've no need to prove anything to me."

"I just want to help."

"You always do."

"And that's who I am, I can't just change myself." Jim's head was buzzing irritably.

"I'm not asking you to change at all, you're perfect the way you are. I just want you to be more careful."

"I was careful."

"Then why are you here?"

"Listen," Jim puts her hand over his with some effort, her muscles still unused to movement. "I know you're scared that one day I won't be so lucky, but I've gotten this far. You've seen what I've survived through."

"I just don't like the fact that while I'm stuck on a colony-"

"Q's turning into a colony? When was it announced?"

"A few days ago. Board finally said it was time for human habitation."

"That's great." Jim's voice takes on a fond tone. "Where are you going next?"

Tommy ignores the attempt to distract him and ploughs on. "While I'm stuck on a colony, you're off doing god-knows-what and getting yourself killed."

"I'm not."

"Well, you've certainly made more enemies since the last time I saw you." Tommy sighs. "You won't always come back to life."

"I'll be the judge of that." Jim closes her fingers around Tommy's callused hand and they stay there for a while. The blonde feels herself relax and drifts off into a light sleep.

* * *

When she wakes up he's gone, and Jim's alone again in her room.

Jim's half-tempted to go back to sleep when she sees a shadowy figure in the corner of the room.

"Come out so I can see you." She squints.

The man comes out, it's Beta. "Delta."

"Beta." She says, mocking his serious tone.

Jim closes her eyes, this was the third time she had woken up since her accident and already they were annoying her.

"Actually it's Alpha now."

"Congratulations." Jim smiles widely, baring her teeth. "It's _so_ good to see you."

"Delta, there's something you need to do."

Jim scoffs. "Do I look like I can do anything now? They've got me stuck in the hospital until I recover."

"Admiral H thought you would be like that, so here's the deal, Kirk." Beta stands at the foot of her bed, his shadow casting over her.

Hunter was still alive, trust that man to come out of a conflict unscathed. Jim warns herself to proceed with caution.

"You keep on completing missions for Section 31 and in exchange, we promise to keep your crew safe. We won't hurt your crew or that botanist you call a boyfriend."

"Are you threatening my friends?" She sneers. "That's a new low for the Section."

"We don't make idle threats," Beta says darkly. He does not move a muscle so Jim makes the next move.

"I'll need some time to think about it."

"Three days, take it or leave it."

"I'll take two months," Jim says firmly. "That's my offer and if Hunter throws a hissy fit, then you can tell him it's over."

"Pike's in a coma, Delta. You're alone if you think you're able to escape us."

"I'm fine with alone." Jim clenches her jaw. "And if you lay one finger on any of my crew, I'll make you pay."

Alpha chuckles, Jim glares at the ex-assassin. "You're a reckless woman, Delta."

Jim smiles, it's not her usual smile, this is gleaming and edgy. "Clearly you don't know who you're talking to, look me up in the main database. You might be surprised at what you'll find."

"We own you, Delta."

Alpha 2.0 moves to the side of her bed, a gleaming hypo in his hand. Jim feels a sting.

She gets the last word in before she blanks out. "Nobody owns me."

* * *

"Dr. Clarke." Leonard greets the stoic-faced doctor. "And Dr. Burke, what a surprise."

The head of the hospital board always looked a bit like a dog to him, ready to come to heel at a call from his masters. In this case, Burke's master was Starfleet.

"Let's skip the pleasantries, Doctor McCoy," Burke says tightly. "I'll go straight to why we're here, and I can tell you we have a bad situation on our hands."

"Khan's blood," Leonard says simply.

"Doctor McCoy," Clarke begins. "It just isn't natural to bring someone back from the brink of death because you can. When you die, you die."

"Yes-"

Burke interrupts Leonard. "So you don't deny that you have gone against the very code all doctors stand for?"

"Please let me finish, Doctor," Leonard says, voice deceptively gentle. "Captain Kirk sacrificed herself for the sake of her crew-"

"She got to where she is right now because she was in the right place at the right time, Kirk is the most expendable of all the crew after all."

"Stop interrupting me." Leonard restrains himself from rolling his eyes."And she's worth ten of you."

"Are you blind, boy?" She sighs, exasperated. "She was not supposed to live."

"My obligation is to save the patient. Which I did."

"The press is breathing down our necks because of this superhuman blood." Burke hisses. "How could you have done something as reckless as this and not be aware of the consequences of your actions?"

 _Because she's my best friend._ He wants to say, to tear down Burke's words with such a simple yet true statement.

Clarke looks at him not without sympathy. "Doctor McCoy, we'll have to release a statement that we can't cure all the diseases in the world with genetically engineered blood sometime soon, most likely after Captain Kirk's recovery."

"You have to do it," Burke says. "And that's an order from the top."

"Of course." Leonard dips his head. "Do I get to write it?"

Burke looks at Clarke, who shakes her head slightly. "No."

* * *

"This resurrection thing is bull, Bones." Jim says, flexing her hand as her friend comes in. "Did you really think tribble physiology and human physiology were exactly the same?"

"Hello to you too, Jim." Bones replies, tapping on his PADD. "And it worked because of science."

It's been a week or so and her body had been improving rapidly. Her mobile skills still needed some time to heal but other then that, Jim felt like her old self. No more bloodthirsty than usual.

"Are you ready to get out of here?"

"Yeah." She nods and takes a bite out of her apple. "I am."

Bones gives her the _look_ , where he gazes at her from under his lashes, judging her silently. Jim gives him a classic shit-eating grin and chews.

He plucks the apple out of her hand.

"Are you ready for the press conference?" She asks him back, trying to get her apple back.

Bones pulls a face, holding the apple high above his head, out of her reach- and he called _her_ childish. "I swear to God that's the last time I'm saving you."

"That's what you always say," Jim smirks and jumps for the apple, but she misses and her hand grabs air.

She frowns at her right hand.

The look on Bones' face is painful to see.

"Don't worry." She reassures him. "I'll be fine in no time flat."

"Here's a list of things you shouldn't be doing for two months or so." Bones offers her a PADD.

"No drinking. No staying up past ten. No intense sex." She reads the first three points aloud and skims the rest. "Basically nothing besides breathing and reading the revised regulations manual and other educational materials."

The last part comes out sounding more like a question.

"Spock?" Jim asks.

Bones nods grimly.

"Huh." Jim gives the PADD back. "So am I allowed to watch your conference?"

"You can watch it online." He says. "I've only read it 74 times this week."

"I've told you before, Bones." Jim gives him her best comforting look. "It'll be over so fast, you'll barely be able to tell them about anything."

* * *

 _PRESS SEC.: Doctor McCoy will now answer your questions._

 _QUESTION: Doctor McCoy, what will happen to the millions of people with illnesses that may be cured with this superhuman blood?_

 _DOCTOR MCCOY: I'm sure that governments worldwide would continue to fund their medical research into finding cures for rare diseases and ailments for their people with the help of Starfleet's technology._

 _QUESTION: Can what happened to Jim Kirk happen to anyone else? Can this blood really bring back the dead?_

 _DOCTOR MCCOY: At this moment we have no idea. But Starfleet's leading medical figures do not want to utilize this superhuman blood again in the future._

 _QUESTION: What is your relationship with Jim Kirk?_

 _DOCTOR MCCOY: We're friends and colleagues. And one question at a time, please._

 _QUESTION: Do you think that it affected your decision to administer the untested blood to her with some potentially deadly and undiscovered side effects?_

 _DOCTOR MCCOY: No comment._

* * *

 **AUTHOR'S NOTE**

 **Hi everyone and Merry Christmas! Thanks for all the follows and favourites! So this is an update. Yay.**

 **I've always found the plotholes in ST:ID a little bit annoying, and while not fixing those holes, this chapter makes some (hopefully) witty-ish comments about it. So this chapter has been four months in the working with appearances by Tommy and Beta/Alpha. Writing dialogue that actual humans can use is hard. Hope you liked it though.**

 **I still haven't found room for the descriptions of Jim's eyes from a reviewer, maybe in the next chapter. The next chapter will be Jim's recovery (this story is slowing down a bit for the holidays and exams). Thanks for reading this far!**


	15. Stardust Stories

**Chapter 15**

 **Stardust Stories**

Jim keeps her face impassive. She straightens herself, rubbing her finger over the flower she was holding.

Flowers were such a waste, a tradition that faded out two centuries ago. But Pike was always about tradition, honour and sacrifice. And above all duty.

She misses him like a child who has just lost her father. He did his duty and left her behind.

She's running out of friends and making more enemies than she can afford to have. Jim had the love of the public but Starfleet was losing its reputation as peacekeeping organisation.

First Marcus having a secret project and then Khan destroying the headquarters, killing more than half a million innocents. Tensions between the Federation and the Klingons were at a new high.

The brass needed someone to be their face, their armour. Jim was compliant. She went with their PR plans. And Pike, their one voice of reason, was not there. She doesn't mind now, her crew was safe, her career was intact, everything that mattered was fine.

She watches her mentor in her seat next to his bed, clad in a simple black dress, almost as though she was going to a funeral. He looks peaceful with his eyes closed, like he was having a really nice nap at her expense.

It's the first time she's visited him since she left the hospital.

She isn't sure what she's doing here, with mountains of paperwork to finish on her desk, an appointment with Bones, and a dress uniform to pick up. Her last one didn't fit so well anymore after she lost a few pounds during her hospital stay.

Maybe she was feeling sentimental. Not that she would ever have told the admiral that he was like a second father to her. It was too late for those things anyway.

"Kirk." Someone greets as they come into the room. Jim recognises as Philip Boyce, a doctor she had come across a few times in the Academy clinic.

She knew that he and Pike were close, and had guessed that their relationship went beyond friendship. He had patched her up after several bar fights when Bones was nowhere to be found in the ER. Nice doctor, though his bedside manner left something to be desired.

"Dr. Boyce," She says respectfully, "I see you've come to visit Admiral Pike too."

"Kirk." He says almost curtly. "Good to see you again."

"Call me Jim." She says, out of habit.

"How long until he wakes?" She inquires after some awkward silence, even though she had already asked the doctors about twenty times or so since she got here.

"It's not likely he ever will," Boyce replies curtly, as if the man in a coma on the bed was just another patient and not a friend of many decades. "That was a heck of an injury even for him."

"I hope he will," Jim says, still holding the flowers. "Show those doctors wrong."

"Are those for him?" Boyce gestures to the lilies.

Jim shrugs.

Boyce's face turns sour. "He hates lilies, said they reminded him of death."

She looks at the old man, really looks at him. He just seemed sad instead of angry.

Jim doesn't hesitate to make the offer. "Would you like to take a walk with me?"

Boyce rubs a hand over his face, and glances back at Pike's comatose body wistfully before nodding once.

* * *

Jim puts on her glasses and wonders if it'll be enough to keep her from the hungry eyes of the press.

Outside of the hospital, Boyce seems to draw deeper into himself, and Jim speculates over just how deep his bond with Chris had run.

"Are you alright?" She asks in concern as they stride along a street, the crowd parting for them.

The doctor laughs mirthlessly, drawing a hand over his face. "Damn, Kirk, I feel like I should be the one asking you this."

"Are you?"

"I'm feeling like I'm speaking to someone who should technically be dead," Boyce replies stonily.

"If you're saying that we could use Khan's-" even saying his name sent a chill down her spine- "his blood, then you're mistaken."

"You got lucky that the attending physician was your friend, Kirk," He says. "Doctor McCoy was willing to break the Code for you, I've seen that press conference. He's one of the smartest surgeons in Starfleet, kid, if anyone can find a way to cheat death, it's him, He tested something unknown on you without hesitation, that sort of loyalty is not something you see every day."

Jim doesn't answer and walks up to the Memorial, placed in the heart of San Francisco, a daily reminder of all the lives lost to Nero.

She traces her finger along those names. The holographic images of men and women and others, the countless dead, flicker as her finger lands on their etched names. People who died, people she knew, and the names that were not there: _people who survived_.

Jim leans against the cool stone, a bittersweet smile comes onto her face. Death came eventually to everyone, and she could only hope that when her time came, she would not be alone.

She doesn't like to think of what had happened in the engine chamber of the Enterprise. Life sometimes hurt more than death.

She remembers her father, his desperate voice and final moments spent in silence. Jim hopes in this won't happen to her. The last thing she wanted was her father's death.

"Chris is a brave man," Boyce says, breaking the silence. "Saw the best in everyone, like your father did. He had faith in the people he trusted, including you, Kirk."

Jim lays the flowers in front of the USS _Farragut_ stone and stares mournfully at a name written in Orion. _Galia Vro_.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Boyce murmurs.

"Me too," She turns back to Boyce. "He chose me, out of all those people, not exactly a good judge of character."

Boyce gave her a look that seemed to be half frustrated and half awe. "You're not as observant as they say you are, aren't you?"

Jim just chooses to smile mysteriously.

He continues. "Chris taught me a lot of things, the stuff he and your father would get into, dragging me along with them."

"Aren't most stories better told over a drink?"

"Nice try, kid," Boyce says. "You're not allowed to drink. Think of the state of your body."

It had been worth a try. "Coffee?"

"You paying?"

Jim calculates her bank balance in her head. She thinks it was at least in the high thousands now. "I think I can."

* * *

Boyce orders for both of them after Jim tells him that she doesn't really care that much about coffee. She probably wasn't allergic to it.

"Made with actual beans," Boyce says, a touch more warmly than he had been for the whole of their interaction as he hands the steaming cup to her reverently. "The good stuff."

She blows on it and takes a sip cautiously. The taste is not too bitter, but she had to get used to the richness.

"Not bad, huh?" Boyce smirks as he watches her face change from skeptical to one of content.

"You know the barista recognised you and wanted to give me the drinks for free as thanks for saving San Francisco."

"Did he?" Jim says nonchalantly. "Are these things on the house?"

"No." He says. "I thought you would like some privacy so I told him he needed to get his eyes checked."

"Thanks," Jim replies. "I appreciate it."

"People are inherently good," Boyce says. "Or that was what Chris believed."

"Tell me something I don't know." Jim holds her hands to the coffee cup, savoring the warmth. Even in the San Francisco heat, she was still cold. "What was he like as a captain?"

For a moment there, Jim thought the older man wasn't going to answer her, but he did. "As captain of the _Liberty_ , he annoyed me more often than not. Taught me a lot of things. How to play chess, grow tomatoes in space-"

Jim gives a small laugh, Boyce wonders if there had been something in his coffee because he could feel a half-smile tug at the corner of his mouth. "Don't laugh, kid, it's true. We had the best damn Italian cuisine in the 'Fleet, made us put on a couple of pounds each whenever

Commander Marino turned a year older."

"Wow, we should do that too, on the _Enterprise_." The blonde replies with a smile of her own. "So chess?"

Boyce shudders and drinks his coffee before answering. "I've never won a game in my life. All these little geniuses running around onboard, with their overly complicated tactics, and Chris was still so young when he taught me. He and your mother, ya know, kept me running around in circles back when we served on the _Kelvin_."

Jim's smile fades. "My mother?"

Boyce nods, the air seemed to have gotten chillier in the span of two seconds. "Your father, George, may have been the smart one, but he was no good at planning ahead, Kirk. They were both older than us, sort of like seniors to us freshmen. Winnie- we always called Winona that, just to push her buttons- could win against Grandmasters in five moves, hell of a mind."

Jim remembered reading about how babies get most of their intelligence from their mother's side, she could believe that. "A Grandmaster?"

"Just the one ambassador who managed to insult her sex and the Captain." Boyce's eyes glaze over at the memory. "Proved that arrogant bastard wrong in a minute and a half. George clapped and kissed her, right in front of everyone, and she flipped her opponent off in his embrace. Females are scary as hell."

"Damn right we are," Jim says and thinks about her mother, the defeated look in her eyes when she had called to her what seemed like years ago, and the hope in them when she had agreed to reconnect.

"You don't exactly have many fond memories of your mother, do you, Kirk?" He asks.

"Many is an overestimation, I have no fond memories of her," Jim admits matter-of-factly. "I never knew her for long enough to get close."

"Then I can't exactly tell you after it's been four years that I'm truly sorry for what happened to Winona Morris," Boyce tells her with something like sadness in his voice. "She was an amazing woman, lit up whenever she got her point across, glowed when she got pregnant."

"Morris? She never took my father's name?" Jim inquired. _This was new._

"It was her identity, and she never stopped using her own last name. George loved her too much, and didn't really care, even after they got married." Boyce explains, looking at something beyond Jim. "She was her own person."

Her voice sounded weak to her own ears. "But in all the books and articles-"

"Her last name was Kirk because she didn't have any say in it." Boyce looked angry on her dead mother's behalf. "She didn't correct them, instead becoming just another supporting character in a hero's tragedy, only remembered in history as his young widow with a newborn child. Winona lost some fight in her when she came back to Earth, his death hit her where it hurt. She didn't like to say it, but they were closer than anyone else onboard that ship."

"She didn't even stand up for herself? His death couldn't have been the end of the universe, she should've loved her children even more after that. Winona could have stayed."

"Chris and I, we told her that she couldn't just run away from you and your, uh, brother, was it?"

Jim nods and he goes on. "She tried, really did, stayed for the first year, you probably don't remember that, but we babysitted you when she was off doing press," Boyce says. "You were really quiet as a baby, had the worst allergic reactions to food I had ever seen though, and I'm the grandfather of four kids _and_ friends with Chris Pike."

Jom finishes her coffee and glances around the cafe. There are people sneaking looks their way and some looked torn between standing up and looking away. She thinks one of them takes a picture when she makes eye contact with him.

She frowns. "We should go somewhere else."

"I think so."

* * *

"Where was I?" Boyce asks once they are out on the street.

"You and Chris, babysitting me."

"You and Sam." He says after a moment of thinking. "I recall your brother saying, and he was six or seven at the time, that you were the prettiest thing he had ever seen when you were finally asleep after trying to bite his nose off when he held you. Never a dull moment with him."

"Sam," Jim says with a crooked smile.

"I watched your mother give birth you know-"

"Okay." Jim cuts him off, making a face. "Too much information."

Boyce looked too amused for his own good and Jim thinks that he would gladly go into detail if he thought it would embarrass her. But he doesn't, and she's grateful.

"Winona was fine for the first few months, acting strong in front of everyone, played with you and Sam when she came dropped by Iowa," Boyce says. "But I saw her looking at you, after she had had something to drink, wouldn't let anyone near you. Of course, nobody thought it was off at the time since it's normal for a mother to be overprotective after such a traumatic experience."

Her legs are moving of their own accord, as they walk towards an unclear destination. _Why had nobody ever told her this?_

"It was only when you were nine months old when we started to notice the problem." He paused. "Your eyes had just turned blue, rather late for your age, but space babies are usually different from others. They were the spitting image of your father's, Sam had inherited Winnie's eyes, green through and through, but yours were blue and quite large, so it was impossible to look away- believe me, everyone tried. Number One took pictures constantly."

Jim had never seen any pictures of herself in the first year of her life, besides the ones of Winona Morris walking out of the shuttle after her father's death with her in her arms, and had always assumed that it was because nobody cared to take any.

"Winnie came home one day, looked at you, and started to cry," Boyce says. "Chris told me that when he was still doing his dissertation on the _Kelvin_ , I had a patient at the time so I couldn't be there for you."

"Chris said you reminded her too much of George, his colouring and all that." He continues, shifting to let a group of friends look at Jim for a moment, eyes wide, before moving on. "Winona Morris' first love had been your father, and then Sam, and then it should've been you."

"You have to remember she was twenty-seven when she had you, a widow, and a mother of two," Boyce says. "The pain of George's death was so great, she turned it into a drive to provide for you two. And when your eyes turned blue, well…"

Boyce looks away, his mouth pursed. "Well let's just say she ran away."

"Nobody stopped her?" Jim says, stopping in the middle of the street.

"No one could. And your mother, lovely woman as she was, caught the eye of some man." Boyce looks at her brilliantly blue irises, and sighs, rubbing his eyes. "Some conversations really are best carried out in private over drinks, aren't they? I'm too sober to deal with your daddy issues, kid."

"Don't call me that."

"She could've been a good mother if she had had George by her side to share the burden if that Romulan ship had never entered this universe. She might not have left. And she did try to come back, but they wouldn't let her."

"Who?" Jim says, starting to walk again.

Boyce's wrinkles his forehead. "She wouldn't tell any of us, not even when we asked. Must be some real important folks though, she could never get out of those _events_ she had."

Jim's suspicion is piqued. "What kind of events?"

The other man shrugs. "Winnie never said. Dropped off the grid almost completely. We just hoped she wasn't off drowning herself in drink somewhere, alone, ruining her liver."

"I hate blue sometimes," Jim says, veering off topic suddenly. "Wish I'd been born with brown eyes."

"I can't imagine that."

"I've thought of changing the colour temporarily, just to get a feel of it. I could try hazel brown or a nice shade of green." Jim replies. "But I never seem to be able to find the time nowadays.'

"Blue's a good colour on you. Looks more natural that way," Boyce says, as they near the end of a street. "And here's my ride home."

"Thanks for the talk, Boyce," Jim says genuinely. "Wanna get together for that drink next time I'm on leave?"

Boyce doesn't exactly say no outright, but he does give her a _look_ that reminds her a bit of Bones, when he's being particularly nostalgic about Georgia. "Maybe, Kirk."

"Call me Jim, _please_ ," She says, softly.

"Stay safe." He just says.

And he leaves, moving with remarkable speed for an old doctor, into the crowd.

* * *

Jim's thinking about doing some belated spring cleaning in her quarters when her comm chimes. She's grateful she changed the ringtone to a softer sound rather than the original wail in her ear.

"Kirk here."

"Captain." Sulu's voice reaches her ears.

"Lieutenant." Jim immediately jumps to conclusions. "Is everything alright?"

"You haven't been answering your calls."

"I left my PADD in the apartment." Jim doesn't like bringing her Starfleet issued PADD along with her when she was on a walk. "And I was just speaking with a friend of Pike's."

"You should note that the Admirals have asked you to speak at the Enterprise's rededication ceremony next month. Repairs are nearly finished."

"I remember Scotty being really excited about that. I'll reply as soon as I get back." The blonde says, running a hand through her hair. "I got the memo days ago, is there something else you wanted to find me for?"

"I'm just back at HQ to grab some files during shore leave. I bumped into some admiral, Hunter I think, who told me to tell you to reconsider his offer."

"Hunter?" Jim tried not to sound too annoyed. "He told you his name."

"Yeah, he recognized me. Does he know you somehow?"

"We've met," Jim mutters. "He didn't tell you anything else, did he?"

"No, he didn't." Sulu's voice was firm. "Is there any reason why he might? Anything we need to worry about?"

"None at all. You should go home, get some rest. Word on the street is that you have-uh, found a man here, have fun with that guy."

"I shouldn't be surprised that you know," Sulu says, sounding amused. "Some of the crew are getting together in that new club- The Poison, downtown. Nine o'clock tonight. Do you want to come?"

"Must be that club Chekov was talking about going to. He's finally drinking." Jim muses, the curly-haired ensign had just turned eighteen onboard the ship. "In public that is."

"Bet you five credits that he's not as innocent as he pretends to be." Sulu laughs. "Still, Jim, are you coming?"

"Hell yeah," Jim says. "I haven't had a concentrated drink in ages."

* * *

And by concentrated, she means vodka with an alcohol content of 40%.

Against the flashing and spinning lights, Jim can see with blurry eyes two Beta shift ensigns passed out on the floor, with Keenser gleefully taking pictures of Scotty snuggled into the tablecloth.

" _Zdorovye_!" Pavel- she can properly call him Pavel now that it was clear that he was winning the drinking contest- cheers as they knock back their shots. The kid was drinking her under the table.

Jim was starting to feel sick after the eighth shot. Pavel didn't even seem to be affected and slams the shot glass down onto the table harder than ever.

"That's it. You win." Jim groans. There are some whoops and cheers in the crowd of watchers as credits change hands. She isn't and will never be as drunk as the night she had on Andor, but she surrenders all the same.

She gets to her feet, trying to remember how to walk. Jim trips and someone manages to hold her up.

"Thanks…" She peers at his face. "Sulu?"

"You're welcome, Jim." Her helmsman replies, sipping from a green drink, his grip loosening on her arm. "You should really stop drinking."

"I'm fine." She slurs. "'M not a lightweight."

Sulu laughs. "No one said you were."

"Tomatoes."

"Huh?" Sulu blinks. "Did I just hear-just hear you right or did you just say _tomatoes_?"

"You have an interest in botany, right?"

"Well yeah."

"Think about growing edinble-" Jim frowns, creasing her forehead. " _Edible_ plants in space."

"That actually sounds like one of your not-so-bad ideas. You can open a lab for gardening."

"Aren't all my ideas good?"

The lines around the man's eyes crease as he smiles. "Keep telling yourself that, Jim."

With that, he finishes the drink and sets her against the wall. "I've gotta stop Chekhov before someone takes a shot at him."

"He's Ruuuuusian." She points out. "Should be fine. They're fast because they're always _rushin_ '."

Jim laughs at her own pun, while Sulu looks less than amused. He looks around and his eyes light up with relief when he sees someone coming their way.

"I'll leave you with him."

She twists her head to see who it was, nearly slipping in the process.

"Woah, watch it, Jim." Bone's familiar Southern drawl echoes from the left. "You've had some hard liquor."

"Boooones!" She draws out, leaning against her best friend for support. "What brings ya here on this fine night?"

"Promise of good whiskey but all I get is this." He holds up a blue-tinted drink with some neon swirls in the liquid. "Scum of the earth."

"Those are niiiiice." Jim says, drawing out her words. "Now why don't you be a gentleman and get me one of those?"

"You're not supposed to drink. Your body isn't ready for this sort of stimulation."

Jim wrinkles her nose, her head was pounding. "I've just had a couple a' needles and some kinda custard cream and those shots with Chekov. I'm fine."

"As your personal physician, I think you're well on your way to getting alcohol poisoning. Didn't you read the list of rules I wrote?"

"My personal physician, you say?" Jim wraps her arms around his neck. "You'll always be my doctor, Bones."

"Please stop." Bones is edging away from her, trying to pry her off him. "You're drunk. You should've read the rules."

"Boring!" She declares, flailing her arms gracelessly. "What are you, a fucking genius?"

"You're the genius, Jim."

"Awwww..." Jim trails off, putting a warm hand at the nape of Leonard's neck. "I'm smart, aren't I?"

Bones snorts in disgust, shakes Jim off of him, and drags her by the arm into a more secluded corner of the bar.

"You know I didn't plan to come." He says, staring down at her, Jim was wearing heels but he was still just a bit taller than her. "You missed an appointment today, with me and three specialists who specially asked to see you."

"Mhmm." Jim isn't there, tracing patterns onto the table beside them.

"You aren't paying attention, are you?" Bones sighs. "I'll get a drink."

The blonde immediately perks up at the prospect of a drink. "Go get one. Or maybe two. I'll be waiting for you, _Leonard_."

The doctor shudders at Jim's suggestive tone and walks off, leaving her making swirls on the table.

He comes back after Jim had taken off her shoes and placed them on the table, rubbing her sore feet.

"Were you raised in a barn? Put your shoes on."

"My feet hurt."

"Then you should've worn something sensible."

"But I look good, Bones." Jim is fluttering her eyelashes. "Don't I look good?"

He doesn't answer and instead sets a single drink onto the table. One glass of scotch.

"Tell me who this Hunter fellow is and you get the drink."

Jim turns half-sober at the name. "He's a nobody."

"Nobody doesn't send a man who claims to have been an assassin after a good ol' doctor like me. What does Hunter have to do with you?"

Jim knows the man would have been Alpha 2.0, to think that he seemed like an alright guy at first. "Did he threaten you?"

"No. He just pointed a phaser at my head." Bones' voice rises a pitch or so. Jim winces.

"You should've called me when I was sober to deal with this." Jim snaps. "I'll take care of it. Where did it happen?"

"Who's Hunter?"

Jim doesn't budge. She's fully awake now, if only the room would stop spinning. "Nobody important. This matter does not concern you, Bones.."

Leonard knows he isn't going to get an answer out of her any time soon and downs the scotch in one gulp, the liquid scorching down his throat.

He feels something inside him that wasn't right, because goddammit he wasn't a real Ole Miss graduate if he couldn't recognise being poisoned immediately.

Jim is looking at him, mouthing words he can't understand, her face is so tense, so open with fear, and it's the last thing Leonard sees before he passes out.

* * *

Alpha _feels_ Delta before she comes. A figure in a dark coat down the empty street.

After all, she had proved to be a brilliant tracker on past missions. He could sense the boiling anger under her skin as she nears, making the hairs on his neck stand, seething and barely controlled.

He's heard stories of her loyalty, a fatal flaw if you asked him, Delta would let the world burn to save her loved ones.

He did look her up, the gaps in her profile were strange and he had dug deeper until he saw James T. Kirk for who she truly was. "You never said you had PTSD. Where did you get it?"

"Don't go off topic." Her voice is edged with steel. "Did you do it?"

"Do what?" He turns to face her, a condescending smile on his face.

"You know what." Delta is humouring him.

"Is it because Hunter met with Mr. Sulu a few days ago?" He says flippantly. "Or with Mr. Spock the week before?"

"Don't play games with me. Don't ever believe you're capable of that." She hisses. "Why did you poison Dr. McCoy?"

"I didn't. None of us did." Jim knows he is telling the truth, he was looking right into her eyes, solemn and knowing. "If anything common sense suggests that the poisoned drink was intended for you."

"This doesn't make me feel any better, Alpha."

"But if this was all it took for you to seek us out directly, Delta, we would've done it a long time ago."

The blonde's face is empty of emotion, Alpha knows he said something wrong and it's too late to backtrack now. Her gaze is as cold as liquid nitrogen. He expects the punch before it comes, hard and strong.

There's blood pouring out of his broken nose and he sets it with a grimace. Delta is quivering with rage as he wipes the blood off his face.

He chuckles at Delta's expression. "Direct that hit at someone else, because Section 31 is not responsible for the attack on Dr. McCoy's life."

"You pressed a gun to his forehead, don't you dare say you weren't responsible." Delta exhales deeply after that, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I'm getting so damn anxious these days. It's your fault you know."

She doesn't apologise. Alpha shakes his head slightly at the comment. "I'm only doing my job."

"You don't even have a real job." She snorts, preparing to leave. Alpha stops her with a hand on her arm.

Surprisingly, Delta doesn't struggle and instead fixes him with a piercing look that would've sent fear into hearts of lesser men.

"Hands off." She says lowly.

And he takes his hand off her arm.

"We could give you a lead." Alpha launches into the sales pitch. "The bartender."

"You don't think I haven't checked her out already? I'm not making a bargain with you bastards anytime soon." Delta says cooly, though he senses her interest. "But I will come back to work."

Alpha smiles, baring his teeth. "Good."

Then she has him by the collar and is pushing him up against the wall, applying pressure to his windpipe. He thought she was still in a recovery period- there was no way she could be _this_ strong.

"But under no circumstances will Hunter ever lay his filthy hands on any of my crew. Or I will _rip_ him apart." Delta presses harder, her eyes bear a promise of retribution, and Alpha chokes, struggling for air. Perhaps it was a bad time to notice how she had excellent form. "You tell him that word for word."

"You tell him that Jim Kirk always keeps her promises."

* * *

 **Author's notes:**

 **Title inspired by FOB's Centuries.**

 **Finally have the time to update this fic. Just kidding, I have AP exams in less than two weeks, but I've had this bit in my head for a while now. Question: Where is Kodos? I don't know, chilling on some planet, sipping a glass of wine, watching the world burn, I guess.**

 **So Bones has been poisoned, which sucks for him, and Jim is out there trying to find the culprit (kicking names and taking ass). Question: Who did that? Answer will be revealed in the next update.**

 **In the meantime, thanks for reviewing, following, and favoriting this story! :)**

 **Update (Nov 11, 2018): better grammar, more story(?). Also I passed AP English lang with a 4, which is fine.**


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